My thankfulness is too fragile.

I’m tempted to think of it as ironic that this week, Thanksgiving week, has seen the first real disappointment we’ve had to face since we’ve been here – after a season of sustained, joyful thanksgiving on our part.

We arrived safe and sound in Berlin in mid-August, found a lovely apartment – one that gets tons of sunlight, something we’re truly, deeply grateful for just now – within a week of arrival, have found our neighbors friendly and pleasant, both found good language-study situations quickly, have felt welcomed in our church, and finally got all the stuff we shipped last week, meaning that for the first time in almost a year and a half, we live in our own place that’s furnished with things we own. I have been welcomed and encouraged in both sides of the work I’m here to do, being asked to preach in church this month (my first attempt at preaching in German, which went remarkably well) and to take on challenging and exciting work at our partner seminary. We were referred to an excellent ophthalmologist for Peter and had a great first visit there. We are in the place we’ve longed to return to for years, stepping into the tasks we’ve been itching to do for all that time – and we’ve been rejoicing in it.

But on Monday we traveled for 45 minutes in the cold and wet to the rather grim slab of brick and concrete that houses Berlin’s immigration office, waited for a bit, handed over every official document we could scrape together, and waited for another 45 minutes – then were handed three-month temporary visas instead of the four-year ones we’d applied for. We didn’t have the right stamp here, the right wording there. So home we went, another 45 minutes in the rain.

My thankfulness started to fray, just a bit, around the edges.

I can be pretty good at perspective, and that’s my first instinct: hey, it could be worse. And that’s true. We’re not getting deported, and nothing necessarily prevents us from getting the visas we want next time around. Nothing much has actually changed that should make me feel less thankful. And yet…

That’s not the standard. The standard is thanks in all things, for all things (1 Thess 5:18; Eph 5:20). God wants and intends to have a sturdy thankfulness from me, one that rings out in my singing and talking, preaching and teaching, praying and writing, not regardless of but because of, right there in the middle of, the things that He sends. This light and momentary annoyance is a summons: sing to the Lord with thankful voice, a steady and strong voice supported by the breath of Life Himself in your lungs.

So thanks be to God for sun today instead of rain. Thanks be to God for the prospect of cornbread dressing and pumpkin pie in not so many hours. Thanks be to God for dishes and pots and pans we bought with wedding-present gift cards, and thanks be to God for couches and chairs and beds we bought with a setup allowance funded by dozens of generous friends, family members, and barely-acquaintances who have shared of their bounty with us. And thanks be to God for Frau W. at the immigration office, who is unwittingly helping me to learn to give thanks a little better this year. Thanks be to God for every bureaucrat or neighbor or church member or coworker or stranger who will help her in the years to come to tear away the flimsy self-made thankfulness I slap together when I feel like it and force me to build up solid joy in the unfailing love of an invincible God.

Thanks be to God for you, dear friends, and may you rejoice in His bounty today.

-Ben