Sam Hardman
The old adage, “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” is certainly not invariably true. Nonetheless it does convey a real insight about something deeply embedded in our world. Sometimes it takes the absence – or loss – of something, or someone, to reveal to our self-centered hearts the goodness that the person or thing had conferred. Goodness that should have been a source of appreciation and thanksgiving all along, but instead that we came to take for granted and assumed somehow just to be baked into the nature of things. Goodness that we grew to expect and perhaps thought we deserved. Goodness that we stopped taking notice of – or maybe never noticed in the first place. How many of God’s good gifts and “common” graces are like that for us? Probably far, far more than we know.
It is no great secret that our fallen hearts tend toward both idolatries and thanklessness. Because this is true, times of deprivation – relative or otherwise – actually serve a beneficent purpose in God’s providence: they often reveal goodnesses we have taken for granted. And it’s worth pausing to reflect on ways in which this is true right now. What are we missing now, but really didn’t give much thought to three months ago? What are we being taught – by its absence – not to take for granted in the future?
How about the simple goodness of a hug or a warm handshake? Or the opportunity actually to look someone in the eye and to hear their voice in our ear rather than merely staring at an electronic device? We used to have the freedom to go where we wanted, when we wanted, to do what we wanted. Our freedom in this regard has been immensely greater than that of most people down through the entirety of human history. Have we marveled at God’s goodness in granting it to us? Or have we simply grown accustomed to it and therefore unappreciative of it. This freedom included gathering together as local churches, feasting really together at the Lord’s Table. The technology that keeps us worshipping together is amazing and is itself a tremendous reason for thanksgiving, but our physical separation reminds us of the goodness of life that in a much fuller sense is together.
All of us are experiencing some level of social isolation right now. We all, in a sense, have become lepers. If we are willing to have our eyes opened, we can begin to understand – even if only at ever-so-surface a level – what it means to be cut off from human touch, human contact. And we can appreciate all the more deeply the goodness of real, personal interaction. Of course it would be huge overstatement to liken the deprivation that most of us are experiencing to what an actual leper must feel, so I mean the comparison only in the most limited sort of way. But my point is just this: we have lost something, temporarily, that is warm and good and that enlivens our souls. How much did we appreciate it when we had it? How much did we give thanks for it?
Examples could of course be multiplied. Take this opportunity to call as many to mind as you can. And give thanks. Let the present, temporary deprivation increase the sweetness of the memory of these things, and the joy of regaining them when, in God’s will, we do. Let their loss move us to offer thanks to God for blessing us in such extraordinary ways in the past and awaken a spirit of continuing thankfulness for all the good things he has granted us now – and for good things yet to come.