E. B. White, who wrote the beloved barnyard fable Charlotte’s Web, once said, I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

To improve the world or enjoy it? To save the world or savor it? What to do? Well, let me help you plan your day. You don’t have to choose between them: you can do both at the same time. In fact, unless you do, something will be missing in your Christian character. If you spend all your time trying to save the world, you will miss the half-full part of the glass, and you will clog you five senses from the deluge of delight that God sends through every daughter and daffodil. If you spend all your time trying to savor the world, you will miss the half-empty part of the glass, and you will clog your five senses from the assault of anguish that arises from a world of apathy and agony.

So let’s begin with cultivating gratitude, seeing as this is Wilshire’s Gratitude Sunday, don’t you know?!, and the beginning of Thanksgiving week. And we’ll trust that things that come from love will always do good.

The prophet Joel explodes in thanksgiving by addressing all parties in creation with the imperative Be glad and rejoice! He looks at the ground under his feet that gives hope to the harvest food and tells it to celebrate God’s good care. He looks at animals that graze in fresh fields and trees that yield fruits in season. God is on the job, he tells them; do not fear for plenty, for you shall have plenty. To the children of Israel he promises that no disaster, natural or human, will bring them to ruin, because God will not allow them to be shamed. Jesus does the same in his Sermon on the Mount, telling us not to worry about our lives, because, as Gerard Manley Hopkins so beautifully put it, There lives the dearest freshness deep down things. God’s goodness is inexpressible. God’s beauty is inexhaustible. God’s faithfulness is indefatigable.

Unemployment, illness, bankruptcy, lapses in judgment, even bad football seasons: none of these will spoil the sport of God in upholding you with amazing grace. So be glad and rejoice! Live out of the abundance of love rather than its lack. Focus on the inexplicable and indescribable and undeserving love of this full life that will not let you go and promises to hallow your steps down all the years to come. Open your heart unashamedly and unabashedly. Let yourself cry without embarrassment at a movie that touches you in places you forgot were still tender inside you. Let yourself laugh at the goofiness you are capable of, instead of protecting your buttoned-up image. And don’t forget along the way to bless the One that surprises you with serendipities that can only be God sightings.

Joel Gregory tells the story of a family gathered round the Thanksgiving bird at table, expressing requisite thanks. The five-year-old boy commented on how he figured the turkey would be good, even though he hadn’t tasted it yet. He proceeded to offer praise for his mother who cooked it and his father who earned the money to buy it. Then he recited a litany of the whole line of hidden benefactors that made possible their feast. I thank you for the checker at the grocery store who checked out the turkey. I thank you for the grocery store people who put it on the shelf. I thank you for the farmer who made it fat. I thank you for the man who made the feed. I thank you for those who brought the turkey to the store. Using his Colombo-like little mind, he traced the turkey all the way from its origin to his plate. And then at the end he solemnly said, Did I leave anybody out? His 2-year-older brother, embarrassed by all those proceedings, said, God. Without fluster, the 5-year-old said, I was about to get to him. [Joel Gregory, "The Unlikely Thanker," Preaching Today, Tape No. 110. Thanks to Cindy Ceen for passing this on.]

Are you about to get to God? Have you left giving thanks to God until last? Well, as long as you’re thinking about it now, how do you get to God in a way that says thank you? You don’t just cultivate a spirit of gratitude in theory; you act on it. Like the little boy at Thanksgiving dinner, you let what’s inside of you come out of you. You make gestures of gratitude.

University of Chicago professor Susan Goldin-Meadow has done some curious research. Her report is entitled “Hearing Gestures: How Our Hands Help Us Think.” She wondered what goes on when we use our hands to help us talk. She found that our gestures help our brain unload what is packed inside. By waving our hands as we talk, we are not just helping others understand our words; we are helping ourselves get them out. Gestures help us get a load off our minds, so to speak. Without gestures, we might not actually be able to think as clearly, let alone tell others as clearly what we think. [Wall Street Journal Online (Nov. 14, 2003), by Sharon Begley, Science Journal.]

So if that is so, then maybe we need gestures of gratitude not only to prove to God and to others that we are grateful. Maybe we need gestures of gratitude to help us be grateful.

We are going to spend some time in a few minutes filling our statements of intention for giving to the ministry fund in 2004 and to the Steps of Faith capital campaign for the next three years. I know you’ve been hearing about this for a few weeks now, and some of you can be heard audibly groaning right now. But here’s the thing: I’ve never had a truly generous person come up to me and say, Please stop preaching on money. We’ve all had enough reminding that we should be generous. It’s like going to a doctor for a checkup. She pokes and prods and presses in various places, asking, Does this hurt? If you cry out in pain, one of two things is true: either the doctor has pressed too hard, or more likely, there’s really something wrong there, and the doctor will say, We’d better do more tests; it’s not supposed to hurt there!

So, yes, I want to say again that giving is a gesture of gratitude that nothing else can substitute for. You can’t fall back on that old saw, It’s the thought that counts. If Professor Goldin-Meadow is correct, you may not even have the thought if you don’t have the gesture to go with it. And forget that other saw about giving your time and talents instead of your money. TXU doesn’t accept sweat equity when we go to pay the light bill. Missionaries who depend upon the limited funds we offer are not sitting there thinking about how, even if they can’t eat this month, it’s okay because some of you are serving in the preschool instead.

A tithe is where you begin — ten percent of gross income. We’ve been over and over this. If those of you who make a good income were to tithe the way others do, we’d have more than enough to fund every mission God gives us. But the spiritual struggle usually happens like the guy who came to his pastor saying he wanted to tithe. When my income was $50 a week, I gave $5 to the church every week. When I was successful enough to make $500 a week, I gave my $50 without fail. But now my income has grown to $5000 a week, and I just can’t bring myself to give $500. It seems like other people ought to be doing their part, and the church shouldn’t depend on a few gifts so large as mine. The pastor understood and asked if they could pray about it. The man agreed, and the pastor prayed, Dear Lord, please make this man’s weekly income $500 a week so he can tithe again. …

John D. Rockefeller was a faithful tither all his life. Like me and many of you, he learned that from parents that gave him his allowance and an offering envelope every week, expecting him to do what they were doing because it was what the Lord expected them to do. He once said: I never would have been able to tithe the first million dollars I ever made if I had not tithed my first salary, which was $1.50 per week. You have to learn to be trustworthy with little if God is going to trust you with much, but you also have to learn to be trustworthy with much, or you may have to learn to live on little again.

Most of you can make grander gestures in our capital campaign than a simple tithe. You can decide to make deliberate and maybe even wild gestures that make you aware every day that God has blessed you and you are living out of that blessing.

A few years ago Mary Champaine, the manager of a Starbucks in Los Angeles, hit the lottery and won $87 million. Instead of quitting her job and settling down with her millions, she decided to split it evenly with her 13 employees. The motto of the store that she drilled into them over and over was, One team, One purpose. She figured she had no better chance to prove it than in that moment.

We have made that same covenant with one another in baptism — One team, one purpose — and now we have a chance to prove it in our giving. In recent days I have heard stories from some of you about what gestures of gratitude you are going to make to God and your church in this campaign. One couple told me of a recent sale of a business that will result in a bonanza over and above regular income. They are going to share that with us. Another told me they have the money to give a substantial gift ,and they don’t know if they will have it for the next campaign, but they figured, Use it or lose applies to giving, too, so they are giving it all now. Another is going to double tithe for the next three years, giving one tithe to the ministry fund and one to the capital campaign. Kim and I are going to have to give like some of the rest of you, out of our income. But our gratitude for what you have meant to us and our family leads us to give an amount over the next few years equal to twice our tithe this year. You have to find your own level, but I urge you to splurge. Go ahead and trust God in a big way for a change.

Pieces of April should be on your holiday movie-going list. April is a tattooed and pierced nothing-but-trouble girl living in Manhattan who decides to invite her estranged suburban family to Thanksgiving dinner in her rundown apartment. She’s never cooked before, let along Thanksgiving turkey. But her boyfriend and neighbors find a way to help her with this gesture of grace. The African-American boyfriend even went out and bought a new suit. When his street buddy asked what that was about, he said that love makes you do things you never thought you would. Well, her family dreaded the whole thought of the day. Her mother is dying of cancer, and her father is praying for one good memory before she goes. None of them can see the point, but they all somehow press on trusting that maybe, just maybe, by the gestures of the daughter’s giving and the family’s receiving, something lastingly good can come of it. It does.

Who knows what lastingly good something can come of your Thanksgiving giving in this moment? Make a gesture of gratitude, and leave it to God to see that it changes the world for the better. When you give to God, saving the world and savoring it come together. Don’t ask me to explain it: things like that, things like love, are simply inexplicable.