The Joy of Giving and Thanksgiving

VIDEO

“There is a restful influence in the quiet harmony of a broad landscape, a harmony that […] employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; soothes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through an influence analogous to that of music, lifts it into a more active and more healthy state.”

The author of these words is Frederick Law Olmsted, a 19^th Century American social reformer, writer, and visionary urban planner. Olmsted, as I discovered, helped shape one of the most well-known landscapes in the world, and among the most beloved of our city, Central Park. With Calvert Vaux, he transformed a rugged expanse of rock and swamp into a place of meadows, woodland, winding paths, and tranquil lakes. An immensely visionary feat that continues to anchor Manhattan’s identity and spirit.

It feels almost unbelievable that a city like New York so obsessively driven by relentless demand for development also managed to preserve such a vast sanctuary at its heart. Central Park offers quiet, rest, air, beauty, and inner spaciousness. It supports health and reduces stress. It gathers people together regardless of their social status, their wealth, their provenance - and reminds them, if only for a moment, of a pace of life that is slower and more gracious than the bustle of the city that surrounds it.

The park might also suggest us a way of understanding a passage from Deuteronomy  where the land is described not as possession, achievement, or commodity, but as gift: “The land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Dt 26:1).

In New York, every square foot carries a price tag and a list of calculations: transportation access, school districts, foot traffic, proximity to amenities and the like. When you step into Central Park, that logic temporarily loosens its grip. The meadows, trees, wildflowers, the breeze, the open skies, the squirrels, and the birds do not come with a bill. They cannot be owned, purchased, or traded. They are there solely to be welcomed and enjoyed.

Many appreciate the gift represented by this piece of land without ever thinking of the ultimate giver of the life and beauty that flourishes in it.

Christians believe that it is God who sends rain, causes the sun to rise, checks on the life of every flying bird – and does so merely because he delights in bestowing gifts, whether they are acknowledged or not. We were told that humanity was expelled from Eden, yet God has never ceased to provide new gardens for us: land that supports our life, beauty that restores our spirit, and spaces where our hearts can find rest.

Central Park is not productive in the agricultural sense, it yields no harvest. A farmer gives thanks because land produces food. But in the park, you are invited into a deeper, more spiritual form of thanksgiving, that is gratitude awakened by mere delight.

Our usual ways of ‘giving thanks’ can easily become transactional: God gives us something useful, and we should give something back to him: the first fruits of the soil, a tithe, something that might cost us a little.

Strolling in the park points to another dimension of thanksgiving, one that is less about duty and more about recognition. When you experience a gift that is authentically free, you might be given access to a form of gratitude that arises not as obligation but as a spontaneous, joyful movement of the heart.

Scripture, in many ways, is the long story of God teaching us this deeper form of gratitude: to see everything - land, life, creation, our breath - as gift, and to discover that thanksgiving is a way of manifesting love.

You have all heard of “love languages”, that is the different ways people feel truly cherished and give love in return. The specific framework is modern, but the insight is old: human beings give love and respond to it differently. Some through kind words, others through acts of care, others through the gift of time, others through gestures of affection.

Have you ever wondered whether God has a “love language” too? Whether he has a special way of loving and of feeling loved in return?

Jesus gives us a clue about God’s love language in a sentence interestingly never found in the Gospels but that must have been so cherished by his first disciples that they kept quoting it to each other in the way Paul does  in the Acts of the Apostles:

Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, “There is greater joy in giving than in receiving” (Acts 20:35)

In this beautiful line, we glimpse something crucial about God. God’s joy is in giving freely. This his love language! This is how we can love him in return too: returning gift for gift, not out of obligation but from the delight that arises when we begin to see everything as God’s gift, everything as a manifestation of God’s love.

This can inspire us as we celebrate Thanksgiving today.

Many of us have been busy with cooking, setting tables, decorating our homes, preparing to welcome family and friends at our table.

Still, despite the urgency of all this preparation, we have stepped back for a while and come here, to another table, another meal: the Eucharist, whose very name means “thanksgiving.” We are gathered in the place where Scripture and the liturgy remind us again and again of one essential truth: that everything - our lives, the world, the land on which we stand - is God’s abundant, joyous, loving, free gift.

In most areas of life, we are caught in a web of transactions, expectations, and returns. Even our acts of generosity can slip into subtle reciprocity: when I host, I expect to be hosted; when I give a gift, I anticipate one in return. Transaction is woven into the fabric of our way of living and relating to each other.

Not in Central Park though. And not at the table of the Lord, the Eucharist.

Here, we are trained to step out of that transactional instinct for a moment.

Here, we receive freely.

Here, we meet the God who delights simply in giving.

The Eucharist forms us, slowly and patiently, to share that same delight, so that, bit by bit, our own love becomes freer, less transactional, more akin to God’s love.

Sunday after Sunday, like walks through the park, the Eucharist invites us to pause, breathe, lift our eyes, and be transformed by the realization that indeed “There is more joy in giving than in receiving.”

Here, little by little, this form of Thanksgiving can become our own love language too.