For Paul the Apostle, it is seemingly the worst of times. In prison on trial for his life, news has come of false prophets who have sought to undo his work of founding a church in Philippi, in north-eastern Greece; worse still, he learns that the church is riven by internal conflict among its leaders. Yet this letter, to the Philippians, is his most joyous….

Charity, married to Sid, is dying, and this causes Larry to reflect on his marriage to Sally. Shortly after the birth of their daughter Sally was severely crippled by the sudden onset of polio, condemning her to a life lived in leg braces, continually dependent on her husband. Larry wonders what he would have done had Sally died at the onset of the disease:

“It would have been an appalling fate. I am flooded with gratitude that I wasn’t asked, quite yet, to survive her. But of course she is going . . . the sentence is handed down and recorded and understood… Of all the people I know, Sid Lang best understands that my marriage is as surely built on addiction and dependence as his is . . . But what he doesn’t understand is that my chains are not chains, that over the years Sally’s crippling has been a rueful blessing. It has made her more than she was; it has let her give me more that she would ever have been able to give me healthy; it has taught me at least the alphabet of gratitude.” (Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety, pp. 339-340). Sally’s polio, that “rueful blessing”, has taught Larry “the alphabet of gratitude.” What a stunning declaration. It startles – it might even offend. Does it offend you? It offended many of us in the book club. “How selfish,”, people said, “Larry is always thinking of himself – how dare he call his wife’s polio a blessing!” They were right, of course. Certainly we can all agree that, as an objective matter, polio is not a blessing – not a blessing for the person afflicted by it, not a blessing for those who love and care for them. As an objective matter, polio is not a blessing.

But Larry, Sally’s husband is not objective – how can he be? He is, like anyone in his shoes would be, very much subjective. It is his wife that has been struck down by polio, it is his beloved whom he has stood by on her long pilgrimage back from the brink of death, it is his soul mate that he has cared for even as she cared for him over their married life together. So rather than taking the easy way out here by blaming Larry for not being objective, let’s see if we might find a way to make sense of how this “rueful blessing” might have taught him what he calls the alphabet of gratitude.

Some time ago I had the privilege of knowing a man who was quite happily married, with a loving wife and two small children and a house in the suburbs and a fine job in the city. And then one fine late spring day the cancer struck her brain, and together they set out on a long, progressive nightmare of surgery and radiation and chemotherapy, and then even more surgery and radiation, a slow journey into the night as the cancer relentlessly and remorselessly spread and impacted bodily functions. At first it weakened her left side, so that a leg brace and cane were needed; then came the day additional shower bars were installed to prevent falls in the tub; later came the shower chair, then the stair chair. Each loss was marked by an additional item of hardware from the medical equipment supply store. Each loss was grieved in its turn, each loss resented for the additional hardships and limitations imposed, each loss feared as another marker that the battle was being lost inch by precious inch.

And so it happened that one night they went to bed and slept quietly in each other’s arms, and when they awoke her left arm hung limp --- overnight it had lost all function. And they called the doctors and got an appointment for late in the morning for another CT scan, and knowing that there was nothing to be done for the moment, he removed the shower chair from the bath, filled the tub with warm water and Mr. Bubble, and gently lowered her into the welcoming suds. Then he slid in behind her, and she lay back against him and closed her eyes. And it was there, he told me, that morning, in that time of loss and waiting, in that bath, his wife’s emaciated body nestled between his legs, her chemotherapy frizzled hair pressed against his cheek, that it happened, coming upon him suddenly and without warning: he was flooded with gratitude.

Flooded with gratitude – not that his wife had cancer, no, never that – but gratitude for the love they shared, gratitude for the ways he had learned to be more for her that he ever had thought he could be for anyone, gratitude for those few minutes of peace together in that soapy tub before they headed off to the hospital once again, there to undoubtedly learn more bad news, there to face new and more painful procedures. But right then, in the midst of what any objective observer would certainly believe was the worst of times, he had learned the alphabet of gratitude.

For another man and his friends, long ago and half the world away, it should have been an evening for celebration, a shared meal and a recalling of the Passover in Egypt. And yet here they were, Jesus and his disciples, squirreled away in an upper room in a home in mighty Jerusalem, Jesus’ predictions of his coming betrayal, arrest, trial and execution at the forefront of their minds.

“Then he took the cup, and after giving thanks to God, he gave it to them.” After giving thanks, he gave it to them. There is it again, the alphabet of gratitude. On the night of his betrayal and arrest, on the night on which he would be abandoned by everyone, on the night before his grisly death upon a cross, there is Jesus, knowing full well the suffering that was at hand, giving thanks to God.

Today, the Sunday before that national holiday we recognize as Thanksgiving Day, we call Thanksgiving Sunday. It is a day on which tradition demands that we recall anew all the blessings God has bestowed upon us, as individuals, as members of this community of faith, as a people both of this nation and this world community.

And yet this year may be one in which many will wonder if, in light of the economic and fiscal woes assailing us, we might not be better off just calling off this whole thanksgiving business. Viewed objectively, with the market in the tank, layoffs coming in rapid-fire succession, foreclosures mounting and retirement accounts dwindling, giving to the church off and our ability to meet our bills somewhat in doubt, the temptation will be to question whether there is much if anything to be thankful for this year.

But those who have learned the alphabet of gratitude will gives thanks anyway, even in what seems for many to be the worst of times. They will take the time to sit back and take stock, to count their blessings and not their lack, to refrain from fixating on what they don’t have and instead think on the many ways in which they have been gifted.

They will consider anew what a gift it is be alive, to be living in the most powerful, wealthiest nation in the world, in a nation that has known peace in the homeland, with the exception of the attacks of 9/11 and Pearl Harbor before that, for 150 years.

They will wonder at the gift of family and friends, of the care of loved ones and members of their church community, of the opportunity they have been blessed with to be a blessing to others.

And what is, at base, an alphabet? Not an end in itself, of course – an alphabet is simply a building block of a language, an ordering mechanism, the basis of a way of viewing life and reality. Alphabets, as building blocks of language, provide a basic orientation to how reality is not only described, but also how reality is seen and lived.

Paul, the Apostle, in that letter to the Philippians, urges them to live life based on that alphabet of gratitude. He urges them, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything” – in everything, always, at all times, in the tough times as well as the good times – “in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God.” For they have everything to be thankful for – not just the gifts of life, of love, of whatever material possession they might have had come their way in this life, but this also: that God loves them so much that God has come near, and even now is a presence and power that will never abandon them, no matter the trials and challenges of this life.

Do this, Paul says: learn the alphabet of gratitude, use it to construct a language of life. Do this, and in whatever circumstance you will find yourself, you will know the treasure of all treasures, the pearl beyond price, that which Sally’s husband called a “rueful blessing” -- for “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ.”

Do this, and “Happy Thanksgiving” will not be a wish to be expressed once a year; do this, and “Happy Thanksgiving” will be your way of life.