Gratitude: . . .Know One Another in That Which is Eternal. .

As 2024 winds down it is important to reflect on the year that is passing.  Friends United Meeting has invited a variety of Friends to share their thoughts on gratitude.  As David Steindl-Rast the Catholic theologian said “It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful,” so we too shall take time to be grateful. This week's reflection is from Ron Ferguson, of Winchester Friends Meeting, in Indiana.

“Friends, meet together and know one another in that which is eternal, which was before the world was.” —George Fox, 1657 (Britain Yearly Meeting Faith & Practice)

In the mid-1990s, during our Mennonite Central Committee assignment in Uganda, Pam and I got invited to a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of an American couple who worked for another Christian agency in Kampala.  We found a dozen people there waiting to dig into a meal that looked amazingly like Thanksgiving feasts we had enjoyed at Grandma’s house back home.  The hosts had somehow come up with a turkey in a country where we’d never seen one before.  We were able to imagine for a couple of hours that we were in the U.S. celebrating with family.

Before praying to start the feasting, the host did the “American thing” and asked everyone around the table to name a blessing for which they were thankful.  The guests did the “American thing” by telling mostly about new vehicles or computer equipment they had obtained with great difficulty, care packages recently received from family, or other material things which made their lives a bit easier in a place still mostly foreign to them. There was no football on TV, but the afternoon was a nice “taste of home.”  

As I reflected later on that gathering, I couldn’t help remembering things we had been told or experienced since arriving in Kampala.  Some British Quakers who endured the mid-80s civil war in Uganda told us about driving across Kampala on Sunday mornings to join the small Friends Meeting in worship, and witnessing trucks collecting the bodies of people killed in the night and left on the street.  During worship, Ugandan Friends gave thanks to God for allowing them to survive another week.  A few weeks earlier, we had heard similar testimonies from workers at a Baptist project we supported in northeast Uganda where a rebel uprising raged.  Some of their coworkers had been killed while riding bicycles several miles to their jobs, and during the staff prayer meeting we attended, they thanked the Lord for sparing their lives.

What we thank God for tells others a lot about who we are and what we value.  That Kampala Thanksgiving caused me to determine to learn to thank the Lord for “that which is eternal,” so that others have an opportunity to know me spiritually, and not just in material terms.

Ron Ferguson

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