by Mark Buchanan
An excerpt from The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

I made an astounding discovery several years back. It was one of those discoveries that, once made, you wonder why it took so long to make it. It was this: thankfulness is more than an act. It’s an orientation. It’s a way of seeing the world. Thankful people are thankful, not because they have more than others to be thankful for (in fact, people with much to be thankful for often go in the other direction, and become chronic complainers), but because they’ve chosen to be thankful. They choose to see their lives as a gift. They choose to see the transcendent in the ordinary. They choose to believe in a God who works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called to his purposes.

But let me illustrate.

And the best story I can think of here is a biblical one. From Acts 16. Paul and Silas in Philippi.

The two friends are going to “the place of prayer.” Once before they went there, and that time met Lydia, a local businesswoman. They led her to faith in Christ and she later became a key leader in the Philippian church. This time, a slave girl with a “foreign” spirit meets them on the way. The girl has been a jackpot for her owners. The spirit in her shows her things, future things, hidden things. Her owners exploit her as a soothsayer and fortune-teller. They’ve grown rich off her captivity. When the girl spots Paul and Silas, her sixth sense kicks in, and she follows them around shouting, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.”

This is good marketing. A girl, already widely sought for her “spiritual” insights, to whom many in the city ascribe supernatural powers, now broadcasts, at no charge and with approval, the evangelists’ identity and work. It’s like some syndicated horoscope columnist advising people to listen to Franklin Graham. Why quibble with that? If Paul was the least inclined to exploit the slave girl — everyone else does — he might have kept mum.

But Paul cares more about the girl than he does his own advertising campaign. He cares more about her freedom than his own success. He cares more about her coming to know the Most High God herself, finding the way to be saved, than about her telling others about such things while she remains on the outside.

And then, as is often the case, when heaven breaks in all hell breaks loose.

The girl’s owners are furious. Their “hope of making money was gone.” This gospel stuff can be bad for local industry and economy. They seize Paul and Silas and haul them before the city magistrates, and there create a ruckus, stir up a mob. The magistrates have Paul and Silas stripped and beaten and handed over to the jailer, who places them in a cell within a cell, and shackles their feet for good measure.

And there they sit, in the cramped gloom of the prison house. Cold metal bites their raw flesh. Its weight presses on their throbbing muscles and aching bones. Blood fills their mouths with a coppery taste. Bruises bloom like dark flowers on their backs, swell like tumors on their faces. The fetid air of the cell breeds infection in their open cuts. Blood thickens around their wounds.

This is their reward for doing good, for loving the least of these.

What would you do? Curse, moan, demand? What would you feel? Anger, self-pity, terror? Would you nurse thoughts of vengeance?

Paul and Silas sing. Paul and Silas pray. Paul and Silas hold church. They take Sabbath. They rejoice in the suffering. They consider it pure joy to go through trials of many kinds. They worship the God who can make art from junk.

And all the while, both prison guard and prisoners listen.

Then a miracle happens. An earthquake hits, of such magnitude that the chains fall off the prisoners, all of them, and the cell doors fly open, each of them.

But that’s not the miracle. This is: just as the jailer, the jailer who tossed Paul and Silas into the inner cell, who clamped the chains on their ankles – just as that jailer is about to kill himself because he thinks all his prisoners have escaped, a voice rings out from the shadows. “Don’t harm yourself! We’re all here!”

It’s Paul shouting.

We’re all here?

I can understand that Paul and Silas would stay. I can understand that they would refuse to seize an opportunity for their own advantage if it involved other’s loss. They already showed that spirit with the slave girl.

But who’s we? Who else has refused to seize this opportunity, to grab freedom through this one narrow window suddenly opened, soon to shut?

Who’s we? It’s the other prisoners. It’s those who sat and listened to two men singing in the rain, singing in their pain, praying in their agony - two men who didn’t succumb to the voice of complaint but instead raised the voice of thanksgiving.

Who’s we? It’s all those who, before this instant, never imagined thankfulness as a possible response to life’s hardships and injustices. It’s all those who, until this moment, could not conceive of a God so good, so potent, so present, that he is able to conjure good from evil. It’s all those who are surprised to find, right here in the pit, a God sovereign enough that those who place themselves under his care consider it pure joy when they go through trials of many kinds.

We are all those who discover, this very night, a God worthy to be praised in all things and for all things.

We’re all here.

The Philippian jailer rushes up to Paul and Silas with one question: What must I do to be saved? What must I do to meet the God you know, the God whose love inspires thankfulness no matter what, the God who can subdue the hardest heart, the God who can put into the hearts of captives compassion for their captor?

Of course they’re all here. They have just found the God who sets prisoner and prison guard free. They have found the God worth thanking in all things and for all things.

Where else would they go?

Reprinted by permission. The Rest of God, Mark Buchanan, ©2007, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee. All rights reserved.

Mark Buchanan is an author and pastor living on Vancouver Island with his wife, Cheryl, and their three children, Adam, Sarah, and Nicola. Mark graduated from the University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing Department and he holds a Master’s degree from Regent College in Interdisciplinary Studies. He is the author of Your God Is Too Safe; Things Unseen; The Holy Wild; The Rest of God; Hidden in Plain Sight, and has published numerous articles in magazines and periodicals. Mark and his family love to bike and walk together and Mark also fishes, scuba dives, gardens, and reads widely.