ANKLES, KNEES, TOES, AND OTHER COUNTLESS GIFTS
Are you breathing? Could you just check? You are? Great. Okay. So hereâs my proposal for your Thanksgiving day: Thank God youâre alive. Not that youâre happy or healthy or doing well otherwise. Just that youâre actually alive and not, not alive.
I donât think about this very much and I probably wouldnât think about it at all if I hadnât read the great Christian writer G. K. Chesterton. He was big on this. Among my favorite quotes: âWhen we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?â
I hope Iâd sense the gift of life, but Iâm not sure Iâd see it clearly enough to think about it. Life keeps you so busy that you donât remember that youâre living.
The truth is: We donât have to be here. As the philosophers put it, weâre all contingent beings in a contingent world. We depend for our life on something else â or rather Someone else. God not only created man because he loves man in general but he created you and me because he loves us, and he keeps us in existence because he loves us. Thatâs a gift any way you look at it.
We read in old books about men being given keys to the city and what was called âthe freedom of the city.â It meant that even when the city was feeling defensive and locked the gates, they could let themselves in and wander about at will and enjoy everything the city had to offer. God gave us the key to the world when he made us.
What I suggest for Thanksgiving is ⌠not that you asked, but if youâve read this far you must be interested ⌠is to sit down in a quiet place by yourself, some time in the morning before the day gets busy and certainly before the kickoff of the Philadelphia-Detroit game at 12:30. (And go Lions, because another Eagles loss will put them another half game behind the Giants and that is A GOOD THING.) When youâre sitting down, pick maybe three things from the list below and think about each one as systematically as you can. Think of all its aspects and thank God for each of them.
Letâs take âbodyâ for an example. Have you ever realized what an amazing thing the human body is? Iâd never thought about it until I came across an essay by the writer Andre Dubus, whoâd lost both his legs after being hit by a car.... asked readers to imagine that theyâd only have in heaven what theyâd thanked God for on earth.
I think he asked if weâd ever thought to thank God for our hands and arms. I hadnât. Never occurred to me.
I knew to thank God for the obvious things. I remember once, as a barely Christianized teenager, driving down a country road in a snow storm very late at night. I knew what I was doing and was creeping along when the car broke traction and began to spin slowly around as it glided down the road. It finally settled with the softest of landings into a snow bank and I reversed out and went home. I could easily have hit a tree and been badly hurt on a road that few people travelled, and could have laid injured in the wrecked till morning. Or just gotten stuck in the bitter cold for hours. Or I might have been driving on the highway when the car lost traction and been hit by a truck. It may have been the laws of physics or Godâs hand that saved me, but I knew to say a prayer of thanks.
But about my hands and arms. Nope. Never thought of thanking God for those. But they are actually really, really useful. And incredibly well designed. If your right arm was a gadget youâd gotten for Christmas, youâd be happy as a clam. (If youâre a guy, and a nerd. Everyone else, think up your own examples.) The right arm is a thing to thank God for, the way youâd thank him for keeping you from hitting at tree on a country road at one in the morning.
So if you choose body, maybe start with your toes and think about what gifts they are and thank God for them. If youâre old enough, they probably look funny, but youâd look funnier without them, and they help you walk and run and get from the couch to the refrigerator and back during time outs. Then think about your foot, and your ankle, and your calf â think how useful it is just in connecting your ankle and your knee and letting you move like a human being â and your knee, and so on all the way up to the bald spot. (If youâre an older male with an unfortunate generic inheritance.) Include the parts  you donât talk about, because they are fearfully and wondrously made.
Even if, like me, some parts no longer work as well as they did, youâll still find that Godâs given you a greater gift than you ever realized, and you ought to thank him for it. Every part of your body is Godâs gift to you.
Thatâs the idea. Here is the list of subjects. It is incomplete but a start. Start thanking.
Body
Physical and intellectual gifts
Parents
Siblings
Grandparents and other relatives
Ancestors
Childhood friends
Adulthood friends
Husband or Wife
Children and pets
Good influences (pastors, friends, writers, especially writers, etc.)
Strangers whoâve been kind to you
Home
Neighborhood and town, including neighbors, businessmen, police, etc.
Schools and teachers
Job and co-workers (this may just be âthank you Iâve got oneâ)
Church (local and national), including pastor(s) and fellow members
The Scriptures
Aid, public and private
Public infrastructure (the sewage system, for example, because just think about life without it)
Technology that makes your life better
Modern medicine
The Detroit Lions (if they win)
- David Mills

















