So, come tomorrow, homes across America will be filled with countless traditions coming to life yet again: turkey carvings, football games, perhaps even the start of preparations for the next major holiday we’d rather not think about just yet. But at the start of many Americans’ Thanksgiving is watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (not necessarily mine, but minor detail). The route tends to be filled with massive floats, celebrities, as well as a fair share of high school bands.
Now the closest I can get to understanding what I imagine would be a surreal feeling for teenagers playing in the most famous parade in the country, not just for the crowds lining the street, but the die-hard Thanksgiving traditionalists watching on television (especially when your band gets spotlighted near the end of the route; as if a teenager needs more pressure to hit every note just right and march perfectly in-step with the rest)…the closest I can get is when my high school band marched at Disney World.
Let’s just say: we didn’t have a television audience, and I bet there were just as many people riding rides or checking out other Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck (my favorite Disney character, in case you were wondering) sightings as there were those watching our band march down whatever street we were on. I honestly have significantly more memories of the trip beyond those marching-in-step, beating-my-bass-drum several minutes of performance for…not quite a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade crowd.
I remember laughter shared with friends on the plane ride down, or the mockery we made of a water ride that paled in comparison to what we experienced near Cedar Point, or some of our group getting stuck in an elevator at our hotel (including our best percussionist, who was a little…claustrophobic, let’s say). The parade was an experience, to say the least: one I should be proud of to represent a high school from a small town in Ohio, but it won’t be the memory I will cherish quite as much as others from those days spent with friends, many of whom I still hold dear years after the fact.
Sometimes I wonder if we Christians (as we are asked to be on the lookout for “God moments” more so in recent years because of supposedly clever pastors and other church leaders) struggle to make connections with God’s presence in the…un-miraculous moments. As much as we should cling to the Scriptures for a foundational understanding of God and Jesus’ life amongst us, we should also approach the pages with eyes of common sense and a mind of reality.
I hope we Christians can agree, without feeling as if we’re undercutting or tearing the pages of the Bible apart, that the Gospel writers/shapers couldn’t quite put everything down that Jesus did/said. They didn’t think certain things Jesus did/said could quite make the cut, to be put on the same level of events that were more…holy note-worthy. They didn’t include much of Jesus just hanging out with the disciples or awkward teenage moments or Jesus laughing so hard to the point of tears. Hopefully we can agree such things could happen without it being recorded after the fact. And yet, Jesus (God-in-the-flesh) lived through all those moments God deemed…holy too.
Nevertheless, we Christians are more likely to see God in the walk-on-water/turn-water-into-wine/rise-from-the-dead level of miracle-activity. We see God more often in near-death misses on the highway, inside hospital rooms with medical unexplainables, or full-blown high church worship services with all the pomp and circumstance to rival a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Granted, God obviously shows up in such circumstances, but let us also raise our awareness for the reality of God’s presence in the moments that will never be written down, the moments that will never make an obituary that attempts to define our life after the fact.
Yes, we will give thanks to God tomorrow for the main event after the turkey carving, or the recent accomplishments in our job, and a long list of our own personal miracles, so to speak. But, let us be thankful for the in-between moments too: the utter simplicity of a shared-conversation, for laughter, standing outside in the backyard tossing a football around, and on and on we could go. And, well, on and on God does go throughout our life too, through all the moments that will never get recognized beyond our heart. God wouldn’t miss any of them. It is, after all, yet another blessing to the whole ultimate miracle moments of the cross and the empty tomb: set free from having to worry about sin and death to maximize all the moments possible our whole life long and forevermore. Thanks be to God indeed! Amen.
In Christ,
Pastor Brad