Gaggle of Geese | Gifts of God
A Day of Thanksgiving. Today. Every day. Rising above the gaggle and grind of daily life, above the mayhem, we can see and be grateful, on all days, for the heavenly pattern unfolding here on earth.
Somewhere in the MidWest of the United States. Driving along a country road, another year but the same time of year as this season of Thanksgiving, I spotted a flock of geese resting from their southward journey on a large pond. I pulled off the road as quickly as possible, well past the pond, careful not to disturb the flock. Armed with my long lens camera, I crept back towards the pond, determined to capture them at rest, and then in flight, knowing that my presence, once detected, would send them to the skies. The result is one of my favorite images, because it shows the absolute chaos at the beginning of startled flight, that in other images and in our collective lived experience, inevitably sorts into a discernable and orderly flight pattern. On the ground, on the water, in the earliest stages of flight, the pattern is not discernable. But in the skies, order is restored as the flock responds to its inborn instinct for the homeward journey.
All of us have an instinct for home. The desire to worship God, though manifest in many different ways across the earth, is inbuilt, a part of us, unavoidable, and greatly desirable. Even those who try to ignore, or deny, that basic human fact are compelled to wrestle with its part in their daily experience.
C.S. Lewis put it this way …
"What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could .... invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside of God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history - money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery - the long terrible story of [people] trying to find something other than God which will make [them] happy. The reason why it can never succeed is this: God made us, invented us as [an inventor designs] an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, page 50.)
In a world filled with division and mayhem on the ground, there is still more good than bad, and there is order in the apparent chaos that supersedes all division, all lesser instincts, all maladies. When our thoughts ascend beyond the ground level view, the heavenly order, the greater reality, the gifts of God, speak to our innate senses and we give Thanksgiving, not just on one day, but on every day.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life (KJV John 3:16).”
