I am so happy to finally be writing a blog about one of my favorite topics! This word ‘eucharisteo’ has changed my life, I believe. So here it goes…
“And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them…” Luke 22:19. “He gave thanks” reads “eucharisteo” in the original language. The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning “grace.” Jesus took the bread and saw it as grace and gave thanks. He took the bread and knew it to be a gift and gave thanks. Furthermore, the derivative of the Greek word charis, is “chara” which means “joy.”
Charis. Grace.
Eucharisteo. Thanksgiving.
Chara. Joy
I breathe deep like a traveller finally coming home. This is what I long for, for more joy. Deep chara joy is found only at the table of the euCHARisteo- the table of thanksgiving. The height of my joy is dependent on the depths of my thanks. As long as thanks is possible, joy is always possible.
Jesus took the bread and gave thanks, and then the multiplying of the loaves and fishes. Jesus took the bread and gave thanks, and then the miracle of Jesus enduring the cross. Jesus stood outside Lazarus’ tomb, with tears streaming down His face, and He looked up and prayed, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.” And then the miracle of the dead man rising. Thanksgiving raises the dead!
I need to forsake my non-eucharisteo, my bruised and bloodied ungrateful life and grab hold of eucharisteo, a lifestyle of thanksgiving. May a life of eucharisteo really work the miracle of seeing and being in communion with God?
In Luke 17, Jesus heals 10 lepers from their disease as they were walking away from Him. “But one of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus feet and thanked Him” (Luke 17:15-16). Jesus asks, “Were not all 10 cleansed? Where are the other 9? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this one?” Then He said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” Wait, hadn’t Jesus completely healed the leper already? But one returned, and Jesus said that his faith had made him well.
The word that is used here for wellness is sozo, in Greek. Sozo means true wellness, complete holeness, to save completely. The leper experienced sozo when he gave thanks. Our very saving is associated with our gratitude.
Eucharisteo is the only way from empty to full. It’s the word for the saved, fully healed living, a word that works the miracle that heals the soul and raises the very dead to life.
“Gratitude bestows reference, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe.” Change takes real intentionality like a woman bent over her garden beds everyday with a spade and the determined will to grow up something good to strengthen the heart. This is what I have discovered as I have been counting gifts with my teammates. In Honduras, which was a very hard month for us, we began to write down little blessings in a journal. We were thankful for cold water to cool us down. We were thankful for gatorade. We were thankful for all these small little things that the Lord blessed us with. They are such common things, and I didn’t even realize they were gifts until I write them down. Gifts the Lord gives me. In eucharisteo, the vocabulary is simple, like a child thankful for the child-like and the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. Writing it down is like unwrapping love.
Paul says it in Phillipians; actually he says it twice. “For I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.” … “I have learned the secret to be content in any and every situation, with full stomach or empty.” I would have to learn eucharisteo. I want to know it like I know my own skin or the words on the end of my tongue. Until now, I never really learned the language of “thanks in all things!” Pastors preached it, but I came home and griped on. I hadn’t practiced.
It may seem silly, or even offensive to find glory or beauty in the small, in the daily. To focus our hearts on something so minute and regular. And for that I have a lot to say. Moving ink across the page open ups the eyes, and sheds light. Picking up a pen isn’t painful and writing can be cheap medicine. Do not disdain the small. An entire life is made up of little parts and if we miss the small, we miss the whole. The small moments will add up. I have discovered that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things. That’s why I believe in counting.
Counting gifts can even lead us to the hard language. Counting even our hardships as blessings. Maybe we could learn the vocabulary for gratitude in the midst of sickness, death, struggles. I’ve got to learn that type of language because that is the world I’m living in. I know the world is broken and desperately empty. I have looked true pain in the eyes. But we cannot reject pure joy when it is joy that saves us, remember! When I neglect to give thanks for that coffee warming my hands on the frigid morning, or the kisses on the cheek from my little nuggs, or the way the sun shines through the blanket of clouds, I only deepen the wound. There is suffering, there are hungry, but we cannot reject joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering. That doesn’t rescue them but the converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and beautiful and who give thanks in the small, discover joy in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest light into the world. When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy enter our cracked and dry places. Let joy soak into our brokenness and deep crevices, life grows. Something will come to fill the empty places in us and when I give thanks for the microscopic, I allow room for God to grow within me.
Daniel from the Bible was a power prayer not because he bends the stiff knees and petitions before the High Throne three times daily. His prayers move lion jaws and kings because he prays three times daily just as he has always done, giving thanks. The only way to be a woman of prayer is to be a woman of thanks. And not general, sporadic thanks, but three times a day eucharisteo.
I’ve been counting all things I had blindly brushed past before. Counting all these things is really a way to count all the little ways God loves me. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.
Joy is always worth believing in. The initial discipline, the daily game to count, counting to thousands with the help of my teammates was God’s necessary tool to reshape me, remake me, rename me.
“The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything. He who has learned this knows what it means to live. He has entered the whole mystery of life: giving thanks for everything.” –Albert Schweitzer
I’ve wanted to write about this way sooner, and I probably could have. But I wanted to make sure this practice of counting gifts and seeing joy was a habit of mine. I can tell it’s starting to become like second nature, like my first skin. It has transformed my eyes and the way I live. My days are filled with joy.
