Thanksgiving? Seriously?

Ephesians 5^:20 ...giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ...

Yesterday at church, the sermon was on giving thanks... naturally, since Thanksgiving is this week. My pastor spoke about giving thanks for even the hard things in our lives. I get that! I have found a way to be thankful, even for rape. Like everyone else, I've struggled with this concept enormously, but when it comes down to it, I know that it was the affects of rape that drove me to my knees in search of God. Rape was the catalyst to my salvation. And for that reason, I can 'give thanks'. 

The pastor took it further. He spoke about being able to give thanks in the midst of horrible things, because we know that God is good and we don't know how He has/is or will use these things in our own lives or the lives of others... but He has promised;    

Romans 8:28
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

Last Thursday morning, my daughter received a long awaited phone call... "come to the hospital, we have a baby girl for you." She and her husband had been trying to adopt for three years. After four failed adoptions they're finally holding their precious little one in their arms.


As I sat listening to the sermon yesterday morning, I considered how my own adoption had affected my daughter and raised up a desire in her heart to adopt a child (my birth parents were killed in a car wreck - drunk driver - when I was almost two years old.) Something seemingly horrible in my life was used for good in many ways, but right now, it has brought a darling, much loved baby girl into my arms, to be a grandma to. How amazing is that?!

And then I considered what 'good' had come from rape... aside from my own salvation. And it struck me... if I had not sought God due to the difficulties I was having at that time, I wouldn't have raised my children to seek God and walk with Him. My seeking also spurred my husband to seek (he gave his life to the Lord two days after I did.) Could it be that this terrible, painful and life altering thing... rape... was used in such a marvelous way? To bring the salvation of not only myself, but my husband and children and now grandchildren? It would seem so.


God does not commit evil, wink at evil or cause evil. But in His goodness and loving kindness, He refuses to let it go to waste either... He is capable of taking evil and bringing good. He allows evil because He gave us free will... and there are those that will use their free will to harm others in catastrophic ways. I'm not saying that God takes evil and makes it a good, shiny, marvelous thing. No! We need merely to look at Jesus on that wretched cross to know the depth of what sin costs and the price that had to be paid so that we could be forgiven. But He takes sin, and as only He can, He draws our hearts out of it. Whether it's our own sin, or someone elses.


^{Genesis 45:3} Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph; does my father still live?” But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed in his presence. ⁴ And Joseph said to his brothers, “Please come near to me.” So they came near. Then he said: “I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. ⁵ But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. ⁶ For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. ⁷ And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. ⁸ So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.

What happened to me.. what they did, is surely their responsibility and yet; "for God sent me before you to preserve life." Joseph was thrown in an old well and left to die. One brother came back, took him from the well and sold him into slavery in Egypt. Joseph was falsely accused of rape, spent two years in prison before the Lord raised him up to a position of power... where he would be able to save the lives of his father and brothers. And God sent me before my family, into a foreign land of rape... to preserve life. To draw not only myself, but my family and many friends to Himself. To preserve life eternally.


In Genesis 41, Joseph's second son is born...
 Genesis 41:52
And the name of the second he called Ephraim: “For God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.” 

God didn't remove Joseph from 'the land of his affliction', but He blessed him there.
Can each of us look at the land of our affliction and see how God has made us fruitful there? I can... and today, I can truly stand in awe and wonder and give thanks for the ways that He has blessed me. If it means my families eternity... if it means anyone's eternity... I would go through it again and willingly bear the scars.

Happy Thanksgiving!