Dr. Wayne Dehoney, a Baptist pastor in Louisville, Kentucky, tells of a college freshman who attended his first dormitory prayer meeting. Rather unexpectedly he was called upon to pray a sentence prayer. The young man had a slight speech defect which became pronounced when he was under pressure, and thus he prayed: "Lord, make us more thinkful for all our blessings."

That young man prayed a better prayer than he realized. Our English word thank stems from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "think," and certainly if we are more thinkful we will be more thankful. Although our national holiday of Thanksgiving Day is still two months away, I want to share with you some thoughts today about the deeper meaning of gratitude. I want to ask you to join me in considering a thinking person’s prayer of thanksgiving. Perhaps if we do this as a thinkful congregation today, we will be a more thankful people in November.

That thinking person was none other than St. Paul, and this prayer of thanksgiving was the way he began his brief letter to the Philippian Christians. After his initial words of greeting in the first two verses, Paul wrote, "I thank God for you Christians at Philippi whenever I think of you" (Philippians 1:3).

The thoughts which provoke someone’s gratitude tell us a great deal about the person. When Samuel F. B. Morse sent the first telegraph message in 1844, he said, "What hath God wrought!" We don’t have to be students of history to know that Samuel Morse was a man of faith as well as a man of science. His thoughts in his prayer of thanksgiving revealed the kind of man he was. Martin Rinkart wrote the magnificent old hymn, "Now Thank We All Our God," in the seventeenth century during the Thirty Years’ War. His home town of Eilenburg had been stricken with an epidemic of plague and also was under seige. Rinkart was burying people at the rate of fifty per day. His wife also died. It was in the midst of that horror and death that this Christian pastor wrote a hymn of thanks for use by his people. It is obvious from his thoughts of thanksgiving what kind of man he was.

Paul’s thoughts in his prayer of thanksgiving for the Philippians tell us a great deal about him as well. The first thing he says in his prayer is that he hopes the Philippian Christians will grow in love. "My prayer for you is that you will have still more love - a love that is full of knowledge and wise insight" (Philippians 1:9). The King James Version says it even more vividly: "And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment."

When we consider the charter members of that little church at Philippi, it’s easy to understand why Paul would first pray that they should grow in love. Do you remember who they were? St. Luke lists them in the sixteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. First, there was Lydia and all the people of her household. Lydia was a Jewish business-woman, a citizen of Greece, and from all indications, a person of some importance. She was Paul’s first convert as well as being a close friend. Then there was a nameless slave girl. This poor creature had been afflicted by all sorts of strange neuroses and had been exploited shamefully by her owners. But then she met Paul, and he told her about Jesus, his power, and his love, and she was converted. Her neurotic tendencies cleared up, she gained the peace that passes understanding, and the fellows who had been using her as a sort of sideshow freak went out of business. Finally, there was the Philippian jailer, Stephanas, and his household. Stephanas was the fellow who guarded Paul and Silas after they were put in jail by the disgruntled owners of the slave girl. Suddenly, there was an earthquake, his jail fell apart, and Stephanas was ready to commit suicide because he was certain his prisoners had escaped. Just as he was about to end it all, Paul called out and told him not to do anything drastic because they were still all present and accounted for. So dumbfounded was Stephanas by the calm and glowing faith of these Christian prisoners that he fell to his knees and asked them the most important question any man can ask: "Men, what must I do to be saved?" Paul told him, and the Scripture says that "he was baptized at once, with all of his family" (Acts 16:33).

Such were the people who made up the church at Philippi: a wealthy Jewish woman and her family, an unknown slave girl, and a Roman soldier and his family. Not very many and not very impressive, you might be tempted to say; but Paul knew that the measure of the strength of a church is not in the number of its members but in their love for one another. Paul understood that it is often easy for Christians to love everybody but their neighbors. Paul realized that if this little congregation was to survive and have any impact upon the community in which it was located, its members had to overcome the economic and social barriers which might keep them apart. Thus, as he sat in a Roman prison and thought about these friends, Paul began a prayer of thanksgiving by asking that their love for one another might grow even more.

Surely this is where the thankful prayers of all thoughtful Christian people should begin. We should begin our prayers of thanksgiving by asking God to enable our love for one another to grow more and more. As I prepared this sermon, I had my radio on and the disk jockey played Perry Como’s old recording of "What the World Needs Now Is Love, Sweet Love." Never has a more prophetic statement been made in song or sermon. A casual scanning of today’s newspaper reveals continuing tension between the United States and Iran, politicians bickering with one another, rising prices, dozens of divorces, starving millions in Kampuchea (Cambodia), and concern about whether Russia or the United States has the greater capability for destroying the human race. Nowhere in that newspaper was there an account of an act of human kindness or Christian compassion.

Before Christian love can flourish in the world, it must first be seen among Christians. The great, glaring weakness in the church of our time is that all too often Christians do not display love for one another. The pagan world was astounded by those early Christians, and one ancient writer exclaimed, "Behold, how these Christians love one another!" Far too often today, the best that can be said is, "Behold, how these Christians tolerate one another!" I remember as a child two elderly ladies who were members of the church I attended. They heartily despised one another, for what reason I never knew and I suspect they had long forgotten. Yet they each attended every worship service of the church, sitting on opposite sides of the sanctuary, never speaking nor even acknowledging each other’s existence. I can remember even now how incongruous it seemed to me, a ten-year-old boy, to hear those two ladies lustily sing, "Oh, How I Love Jesus!" at prayer meetings!

The sequoia trees on the West Coast are among the oldest living things on earth. Some of these trees were living six hundred years before Moses led the Hebrew people out of Egypt. The secret of their long life is said to be their interdependence. Their roots are not deep, and there is no central tap root. The trees always live in clumps. Their roots intertwine, and they hold each other up. The strength of one is the strength of all. It is unlikely that a sequoia tree, standing alone, could survive at all. Yet together, they nourish one another, strengthen one another, protect one another, and enable one another to keep growing. These great trees - some six thousand years old - are still growing.

In exactly the same way must the hearts and lives of a Christian community intertwine. Only as every person feels responsible for one another, supports one another, prays for one another, works with one another - above all, loves one another - can a community be a community worthy of Christ’s name. Therefore, the thankful prayer of every thoughtful Christian should begin as Paul began his prayer for the Philippians - by praying that we may grow in our love for one another.

But if our love for one another is to be Christ-like love, it must be love with knowledge and discernment. "My prayer for you," Paul says, "is that you may have still more love - a love that is full of knowledge and wise insight. I want you to be able always to recognize the highest and the best, and to live sincere and blameless lives until the day of Christ" (Philippians 1:9-10). Here is another sign that Paul was a thinking man as well as a thankful man. Paul wanted the hearts and minds of his people to grow together. Paul knew something we modern Christians often forget: the thankful love of thinkful people is warm and genuine but never sentimental and naive. The King James Version tells us that Christian love "beareth all things, believeth all things,

hopeth all things, endureth all things" (1 Corinthians 13:7), but J. B Phillips helps us understand Paul better when he translates him to say: "Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything." Christian love is love which grows more and more in the knowledge of Christ. It is love which always seeks to become more and more sensitive, more and more discerning. Christian love is love with its eyes as well as its arms wide open.

One of the most popular programs ever on television was "All In the Family." Many of us watched it because we like to laugh at other people who have the same deep-rooted prejudices we share but seldom express. Archie Bunker was an out-and-out bigot, and so also were his daughter Gloria and son-in-law Mike, although in more subtle ways. Archie’s wife, Edith, was usually portrayed as an unthinking, mindless housewife - a "dingbat," to use Archie’s favorite descriptive. But in one program, Edith revealed that there was more to her than first meets the eye and ear. Seeking to comfort Mike after Archie had humiliated him, Edith said, "Mike, I know what Archie is and why he’s the way he is. He sees in you all the things he’ll never be and all of the chances he never had. But I love him just the same. It’s too late for Archie, Mike, and all I can do is love him. But it’s not too late for you, Mike! It’s not too late for you!"

It is just that that kind of love - "love full of knowledge and insight," love with no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; love that can outlast anything, Edith Bunker-type love, Christian love that Paul was praying for the church at Philippi. It is just that kind of love which thinking people must include in our thanksgiving prayers for our community. We must pray not only for growth in our love for one another but also for growth in understanding of what such love requires of each of us. We must seek to put first things first in our love.

It is so easy for Christian people, really loving Christian people, not to put first things first when we love. It is so tempting, if our love is not guided by the mind of Christ, to pass by what is the highest and best for that which is second-highest and second-best. Robert Moore, a Methodist pastor in another state, tells of an incident in a community in which he lived that illustrates the meaning and need for such love. There was a young, motherless boy in that community whose father was able to eke out only a bare subsistence. It looked as though young Bill’s education would end with the eighth grade. But Bill was one of those boys with every God-given talent to be a great football player. He was fast, tall, heavy, and well-coordinated, with an alert keen mind.

One of the local churchmen, who also happened to be a rabid football fan, heard about the situation and stirred the townspeople to action. They got Bill’s father a better job and made sure Bill enrolled in the local high school. Sure enough, Bill became a football star. In addition, his academic record was outstanding. Everything was going along splendidly until just a week before the final game of the season when Bill suddenly became acutely ill and died.

During the visitation at the funeral home, the grief-stricken father tried to express his appreciation to the people for all of their kindness. "But," he said, "there is one thing you people did not do for my boy." The townspeople could not imagine what that neglect was. After a short pause, the father said, "You did everything in the world for Bill, but no one ever invited him to go with them to church or Sunday school."

Those townspeople had loved Bill, but they had not loved in such a way as to always recognize the highest and best way to express their love. Their love was without knowledge and discernment. They had not learned to put first things first in their love for others.

There is a lesson here which we thoughtful Christians dare not miss. It has been aptly noted that Christians today will be condemned by both God and men if we do not demonstrate our capacity to love. This means that we must be sure we are putting first things first in all that we do. It means that our thankful prayers of love must become thoughtful deeds of love in our community and world. It means that prayer must be our first act each day, that obedience to the plainly stated commands of Jesus must be our first concern, and that our life’s passion must be to do all we can to make our community a community of love. Only as we understand that Christians are Christians first, and everything else second, can we understand Paul’s thoughts in this prayer of thanksgiving.

Only as we put first things first and only as our love grows in knowledge and insight can we understand the ultimate goal of Paul’s thoughtful prayer of gratitude. Paul concluded his prayer by saying, "I want to see your lives full of true goodness, produced by the power that Jesus Christ gives you to the praise and glory of God" (Philippians 1:11).

This was no idle hope on Paul’s behalf. Paul knew that the church existed for one primary purpose, and that was to make new persons out of old ones, to make saints out of sinners. The church does not exist to make bad people good and good people better. The church exists as the primary agency through which Jesus Christ can make us like him. It was Jesus himself who said, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3 KJV) - and that is still the church’s primary reason for being: to be a womb of love wherein we may be born again.

A young bride-to-be was having trouble remembering just what she was supposed to do at certain points in the wedding ceremony. The minister, recognizing her nervousness, tried to advise her: "When you enter the church tomorrow, you will be walking down the aisle of your own church, the aisle you have walked down many times before. Concentrate on that aisle."

"When you get about halfway down, you will look up and see the altar, the same altar before which you have worshiped all your life. Concentrate on that altar."

Then when you are about two-thirds of the way down, you will see him, the one whom you will marry and to whom you will pledge your love. Concentrate on him."

This advice calmed the bride down, and the next day she got through the service without a hitch. Only a few people sitting in, the pews next to the aisle were able to hear her muttering through gritted teeth as she passed: "Aisle, altar, him!"

It may he true that few brides are able to alter their husbands, yet this is exactly what the Christian faith proposes to do through the church. It proposes to lead persons to a life-changing confrontation with Jesus Christ. It proposes that people shall see possibilities they have never thought possible, that they shall do things they never thought doable, that they shall live lives so radically different from their old lives that even their most intimate acquaintances will recognize that there is a new person inside an old body. A minister friend tells of playing with his three-year-old grandson, who wore a new T-shirt upon which these words were imprinted: "I’m a little angel." Whether or not that three-year-old was an angel or not is a good question, but it is a fact that the church of Jesus Christ exists primarily to be an angel factory. The church exists to produce angels, people whose lives are transformed from sinners to saints.

"I, thank my God for you Christians at Philippi whenever I think of you ... My prayer for you is that you may have still more love - a love that is full of knowledge and wise insight. I want you to be able always to recognize the highest and best, and to live sincere and blameless lives until the day of Christ. I want to see your lives full of true goodness, produced by the power that Jesus Christ gives you to the praise and glory of God."

Such was Paul’s prayer of thanksgiving as he thought about his beloved church at Philippi. I pray it will be your prayer of thanksgiving for each and every member of our community today and every day of your lives.