Luke 2:1-7 Special Delivery

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan.

Sometimes, if you're anything like me, you kinda skim or even skip stuff when you read.

Do you ever do that?

I mean, just if you're honest, just reading kinda depends on what you're reading. Maybe your mind goes over the words quickly. Maybe we even browse to the end, and then have you ever got done reading a paragraph and you don't even remember what you just read and you had to go back and read it again?

Do you ever do that?

I mean, those of you who are probably frequent readers, it's easy to get distracted about what's going on or whatever. And there's all different kinds of reading, isn't there? We know the different styles and different types of reading that's out there.

Like, how many of you have ever read, I'm not gonna ask you that, you don't have to raise your hand, the end user licensing agreement that you agree to at the end of your software, when you install your software?

Confession moment, I'm not a big reader when it comes to that kind of reading. It's very easy to just, it's funny, sometimes they actually wanna pretend that they think that you read it, so they have you scroll to the bottom and you have to actually physically scroll to the bottom before you can get to the agree statement, but otherwise they'll just leave it right there and you can just agree to it without even scrolling down.

And so there's all different kinds of reading. And I think in all honesty, if we're just honest in ourselves, there's a tendency in us that when we've read a passage so often, we can just do that to it sometimes.

Click, done, I know this. David and Goliath might be one of those passages that is like that. Maybe even the one that we're looking at today could be one, I know this. I've seen the Christmas pageants.

I've been around for a while. I've read it time and time again. And yet I would suggest to you that we end up filling in a lot that this text doesn't say. So we're gonna be kind of looking at that this morning and seeing that there's a lot of stuff that we think we know that this text says.

And when we dig in, we're standing like, I'm not sure that it says that. Verses one through five of Luke chapter two are often read with little thought. Who is Caesar Augustus? If you were getting graded on Christmas, how many of you could answer that question adequately?

Who is Caesar Augustus? Well, it's in the text. It's in a text that we claim that we know so much about. We hear it every Christmas.

We hear it all the time.

And then who is this guy? Who is Quirinius? Sounds austere. Sounds like an interesting name, but I mean, how many of you know somebody named Quirinius? You probably don't. You haven't met a Quirinius lately, I'm guessing.

And yet this is a name that occurs in the Christmas story, according to Luke. What was the whole registration or census about? We might have some inkling of notion about that, but what's going on there?

Did it ever sink into you that the whole world was in upheaval during this census? It says the whole world was engaged and involved. And I think it's a little bit of hyperbole. I mean, I don't think the Native Americans were doing a census at the same time because Rome was or something,.

But I mean, wherever.

But I mean, the known world and the basic center of civilization at the time was doing a census. And it was not just Palestine. It was not just Syria. It was Italy. It was Turkey. It was Greece. It was the northern reaches of the expansion of the Roman Empire at the time.

Census throughout the entire area. The whole world, in essence, was doing this. And so what do we think about that? Why did they all go to their own homes? And then there's deeper questions that we should be asking about the text.

Like, so what?

Okay, so you're giving us all this detail, Luke.

Why?

Why does this even matter? You know, can't we just get to the baby in the manger? Isn't that the point? Why don't you just go there, Luke, and just start right there? And deeper questions like, is Quirinius just in the text so that kids get a good lesson in enunciation while they're reading it during the Christmas pageants?

I don't know.

But this morning, I wanna walk through the text and pay careful attention to what is here, what is in the text. I'm gonna spend very little attention to what is not written in the text. So we're not gonna be spending a lot of time on the stable, for example.

Because guess what? There's no stable mentioned in the text. We will not be painting a frenzied picture of a couple traveling alone on the desperate, desolate desert road to Bethlehem because the text doesn't say it was a desperate, desolate road to Bethlehem.

We're not gonna spend time on the drama of Joseph and Mary knocking on every door in Bethlehem and nobody would let them in. And then they're finally turned away by the innkeeper to the stable or the barn.

It's not in the text. It's not in the Christmas story. We will not be naming all of the animals that were there in the place of his birth. Now, you know what animals were there because you have your nativity maybe on your shelf or you've seen it in town.

You know and you've got the number of cows and things like that there. But the text gives no indication to that. So let's try our best this morning, as hard as it may be, to wipe the slate clean and look at what Luke, the historian, wants to tell us.

Luke has a message he wants you and I to hear. He has a historical event he wants us to grasp this morning. And we begin with an imperial decree. Luke refers to these events as historical. I love the way that he starts, in those days.

They are rooted in real days. That's what he's talking about. As opposed to being a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, for example. Or once upon a time. Luke says the following happened in days found on a real calendar.

This is our history. This happened in real space and in real time. And it all starts with a guy named Caesar Augustus. When he was younger, he was known by the name Gaius Octavius. How do you like the Octavius?

That sounds like, does that sound robust? Does that sound like, that sounds like a dude, right? I wonder if his childhood friends called him Guy for short. You know, Guy Octavius. But his great uncle, named Julius Caesar, you may recognize the name, took a great interest in him in his youth.

And it wasn't until his uncle was murdered that Gaius found out he had been designated heir to his father's, or his great uncle's throne. And through more history than you probably care to hear me talk about up here, maybe you've already heard more history than you wanted me to use up here.

And we're gonna hear just a little bit more, but Gaius Octavius rose to become the sole authority in Rome, and over the course of his life, many, many events transpired and some caused by him that resulted in the establishment of the Roman Empire.

And he served as the very first emperor in Rome. So this guy, Caesar Augustus, formerly Gaius Octavius, was the first Roman emperor. And so you think about him ordering a census, and in context, it kind of makes sense.

You become the king over a large and expanding empire, and what might you want to know about your large and expanding empire? How many people am I ruling? How many people am I over? And you can imagine that there might be multiple reasons why he might order a census.

I don't know, the text doesn't give them, but I'm sure that there's all kinds of reasons to do a census, ranging from raw pride to taxation, right? A lot of different reasons why, just to beat your chest and know how many people you are over, and then also to know how much money can I get from everyone.

So there's all different kinds of motivations. But he wanted everyone, according to the text, to be registered and accounted for in the world. And Luke's point is not to say that every human on the planet was being counted by the Roman Empire, but this was a massive census that I believe Luke includes in his historical account in order to set this in a time and a frame for his readers to be able to say, oh, that census, that's the census you were talking about.

So this sets the rooting of the birth of Christ in a time that the average person in the world at that time would have been able to relate to. Oh, so these are events that happened in the days of that census.

Okay, everybody knew where they were on that census. Just like you and I could use a framework to say, well, back when the World Trade Centers fell, okay, in that time, September 11th, and you go, oh, can you relate to that time?

You remember where you were, you remember what was going on, you remember some things about what life was like then, and so he's using a major event in his culture to identify what was going on at the time.

And in verse two, Luke attempts to further clarify the history by speaking of Quirinius, who was the governor of Syria. Now, I say that Luke attempts to clarify because verse two is honestly the hardest historical fact to reconcile with Luke's account.

Quirinius doesn't fit well, and so you probably, how many of you have ever heard much about Quirinius? How many of you would say, I haven't heard much about Quirinius, I just don't really know much about him, I've never heard a message talk about him, I've never heard a pastor talk about him, and I'm gonna be honest, I hadn't.

I'm looking at this text and I'm going, why have I never heard this before? I've never heard anybody talk about Quirinius, what is going on here? So I think a lot of people never mention him in Christmas sermons, and I think it's partly because it's confusing, the chronology doesn't fit in very well, and oh, hey, look, it's Christmas.

So I think that a lot of people just don't wanna get into the details, and it's like, oh, don't ruin Christmas with details, do you know what I mean? And so it's like, we don't really wanna get down to the history, we kinda wanna just go, okay, let's just celebrate the great feelings and all of that.

But I'm gonna go there because I believe, one thing we have to recognize is that Luke is a historian who's recording a historical account for us, and he wants us to wrestle with these things, he wants us to struggle through, and he also wants to make sure we recognize that this account is rooted in real time and space.

That's a major point of Luke's intention when he sat down with pen to parchment, was to actually say, hey, these things are real, and I took it on myself to compile an accounting of these things, and to go around and interview people and to make sure that these things are just so, and I'm gonna tell you how it went down.

So there's a little bit of confusion over Quirinius, but the best way I found to reconcile the timing and the chronology and the history and some details that maybe some of you are aware of, probably most of you aren't, is to interpret the word first in verse two as the word prior, the prior census, rather than the first.

And so the Greek would allow this verse to read like this, and this is what I think Luke was getting at. This was the first, this was the registration prior to when Quirinius was the governor of Syria.

The one interpretive adjustment, if we do this, lines up the scripture and the historical reality. Why am I even going here? Because Quirinius was governor from 6 to 12 AD, okay? The problem is, Herod died somewhere around 4 AD.

So to have Herod alive at the same time as Quirinius issuing a census doesn't work. But if there was a census issued just prior to Quirinius becoming the governor, then it makes sense. So that's why I'm going there, and again, maybe more detail than you guys needed, but I think just sometimes I feel like just to be fair and understanding, I don't wanna just kinda blow past some of these things that I encounter, and I wanna make sure that if you become aware, somebody were to say to you, well, there's an issue in your Bible right here because Quirinius wasn't alive at the same time as Herod, there's ways to understand that.

I believe that this is true.

I believe it's a clear accounting. I don't think Luke would have tried to snow people who were alive right then and there under their nose and try to fool them. I think they understood what he was saying.

But now, all of this is history, and yet, Luke the historian wants us to have these kinds of discussions about the text. He wants us to be curious about these events, and he calls us to study and to test his statements.

He wants us to think when we read. Luke roots these events in history, and we may have a hard time making sense of the chronology of things and how it all fits together, but we are confident of the major players here having served and the roles that they are given in Luke, and these guys' roles are very, very clear in multiple documents, in ancient manuscripts and in engravings and all over the place.

There's a lot of Roman evidence for this man, Quirinius, who was indeed governor over Syria. Again, history, not myth, not fable, not like Star Wars, not like all of the Aesop's fables and things like that.

No, no, history, not like the Greek mythology or things like that, no, these were real people. So Quirinius was indeed governor over Syria. Caesar Augustus is well-attested, crazy documentation for his reign and rule as emperor.

Herod, who's mentioned earlier in Luke, was certainly a Jewish king in Palestine during this era. The scripture is amazingly trustworthy and accurate in identifying these ancient rulers. But I think there's more at play in the mention of these guys than just merely tying these events to history, like he just went through all of this detail just to let us know it was historical, which it was indeed, but while these rulers are in the text, we need to remember that we're talking about the advent of a new ruler, the coming and arrival of a new ruler, and I don't believe that it's by accident that Luke mentions two rulers there.

Caesar might be exercising authority over most of the known world at this time. Quirinius might be governor over Syria, but the king over all kings is breaking into history here. So he sets the arrival of the king of kings in the context of earthly kings, who's ruling at the time.

The census would have been, by the way, just think this, put yourself in the shoes of the average citizen at this time in Rome. It would have been crazy taxing on people, living hand to mouth. Most of the people were burdened by heavy taxation anyways, and their living subsistence, it's very hard to get by, and then the government mandates a trip to the place you were born, so that they can count you to make sure that they're getting all the taxes that they need.

Now, for some of us, if you think about that,.

Think about living then,.

Imagine that the federal government said, you need to go back to the place that you were born to be counted this week. Some of us would have a trip ahead of us, right? Some of us would just kind of have a hop, skip, and a jump,.

And you'd be there, right?

For some of us, it would be very little burden. Others, it would be great burden. Some of you would have to get plane tickets. Some of you would lose work time. There would be all kinds of loss associated with this.

This is not just kind of skipping along happy, joyfully, going, hey, we get a road trip. There's loss that's involved in this. There's cost and expense to the individual for the sake of the government here at this time.

And how many of you know citizens don't respond very well to that kind of thing? That's not a real happy thing. Okay, so that's what's going on. And some of us would have to travel.

Some of us would not.

But I mean, you put yourself in that situation, thinking about where you were born,.

You have to go back there.

But with this statement in verse three, that each went to his own town, we should immediately recognize how wrong Hallmark gets it every time that they print a card with Mary sitting on a donkey, with Joseph leading it along a lonely desert road.

Beautiful picture.

Oh, so precious.

Isn't that great?

They get it wrong. The whole world was on the move. They probably were, probably if anything, like claustrophobic with the press of people moving throughout Palestine on the roadways during this time.

They're not alone.

They're not alone at all. The roads were packed solid with travelers. Joseph's family was on the move. He surely was not the only one in Galilee who had roots down in Judah that was traveling that direction.

But even at that, there were people coming the other way as well. So this trip of a couple of days would have involved some kind of caravan, a group of people who traveled together for safety and security.

Not a Dodge Grand Caravan, but something a little bit more roomy that would break down less. But a caravan, for sure. And in verse four, we get a quick geography lesson, a geography history of Joseph.

He lives in Nazareth, in Galilee, in the north. But his family is from Bethlehem in the south of Israel, in Judea. And he is from the house and lineage of David. Now this statement at the end of verse four, if you look at it with me, and Joseph went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David.

It seems like a passing comment. But to anyone who has read the Old Testament, it is loaded with messianic hope. The Messiah would be an heir to the throne of David. Now we live in a culture that loves the story of someone special who doesn't know it, right?

Have you noticed that common theme throughout our movies, throughout our books? We love that, you're special, you're unique, and you didn't even know it.

Harry Potter was raised by muggles.

Until he discovers that he's a powerful wizard. Bilbo is just a simple hobbit who doesn't much like adventures, until. And where do we find Luke Skywalker at the start of episode four? Just a moisture farmer on Tatooine.

So is that too much Star Wars, you guys? I need some, I mean, you guys can kick back.

At me afterwards.

Not enough, not enough yet, okay. No spoilers, no spoilers from up here, okay. Not gonna do it. But yes, I did see the movie. So Joseph is a lowly carpenter. We know his trade. We know what he does. His title, by the way, is Tecton.

The interesting thing is, it's a little bit unclear whether he worked with wood or with brick and stone. A Tecton was kind of like a house builder. And so a lot of the houses were built with mud and brick.

And so it's, you know, we have in our mind, I'm sorry, I don't wanna mess that up for you. But he was a Tecton, a normal blue collar worker who has the credentials to offer to his heir the very throne of David.

In his line, he has the credentials to offer to his son the throne of David. And in verses five through six, we zero closely down into Joseph's life. We mine a little bit more deep. So we get the general sense that he's from the lineage and line of King David, but down into his relationship with Mary.

And now enter Jerry Springer. The simplicity of what is shared in these verses introduces us to an issue that is not resolved in the text. Look at what we get in the text. Number one, Mary is his fiance.

Number two, she's Preggers. Okay, am I allowed to use that word?

Is that a word?

And anybody just kinda wanna go with me on that and go,.

Awkward, okay?

Engaged, pregnant. No culture has been like super embracing of that, right? Especially this culture here, okay? So that's awkward enough, but we know that if we peer into the other gospel accounts, we get a few more details.

So the first is Mary is his fiance. Second, she's pregnant. Three, the baby isn't his. Four, she claims God is to blame for this scenario. Five, he wants to put a stop to the engagement. Six, an angel appears to him and says, don't you dare.

Okay, anybody picturing that car ride to Bethlehem? This is not just your stereotypical happy family, the glow of pregnancy and the enthusiasm for,.

What is going on here?

I mean, certainly they had a sense, and we know that Mary was at peace with this whole thing. I don't know where Joseph was. Obviously, he's still with her, so he's still engaged in the process, and the angel has certainly stopped a level of his anxiety, a level of his fear, but I don't know that this is all just cupcakes, roses, and butterflies here.

Their arrival to Bethlehem is with little fanfare, according to this text. They arrive in the very place that the prophet Micah predicted would be the place the Messiah was born in Micah 5 .2, and it's likely that they stayed with family who had no room in their guest room, and so they're staying down in where the animals would normally stay, still under the same roof is what's most likely.

People would bring their animals into their home. They had a garage inside under the same roof, if you will, and if they had a cow, if they had a higher-end vehicle, a donkey or something, they would bring that in at night for fear of thieves and to keep it safe from wolves and things like that and lions at that time, and so they would protect it and keep it under the same roof.

Most archeologists would say, in all the houses that are uncovered, there was often a manger. I know I'm gonna break some of you, I'm gonna break some bubbles here, but there's a manger carved in the floor in the area where the animals would be, and those are all very well-identified and very clear in this ancient architecture of the time that dates to this very time that we're talking about here.

So the house would be constructed, it would have a roof over it, and it would have an entryway for the animals that would just be like a step or two below where the people would stay in the one room, and so there's no room in this place, and so they are staying down where the animals would normally stay, and I really believe that that's the case from studying and reading this text and going with what it says here.

There's a perfectly good, you know, you might bristle at what I just said. You might just go, well, you're ruining Christmas.

All of a sudden.

I don't wanna ruin Christmas for you. I don't wanna do that, but you need to understand a couple of things. The first thing, most significant, is that there's a perfectly good word in the Greek language for public inn, a place that you would go to pay money, like a hotel.

There's a perfectly good word for that in Greek, and Luke uses that word in other places, and he does not use that word here. This word is not a hotel. This is a privately owned guest room, and there was no room in the privately owned guest room, and so they put the baby in a manger in the family's area for where they would keep the food for the animals.

The construction of verse six implies that they arrived well in time and even hung around until the baby arrived. Again, bursting a little bubble here, but there is nothing in this text of a desperate search in the night for a place to have the baby.

As she's in transition, the baby's about to crown, and they have got to get someplace to have this baby. There is just nothing of that here in the text, and how many of you, that's what you've been taught, that's what you've learned, that's kind of what you've thought is like, my goodness, they just nick a time, and Joseph is there to catch the baby, and boy, that just worked out great, didn't it?

Is that, I mean, what did you think Joseph was doing? All of these years, you've been celebrating Christmas, and what did you think Joseph was doing? Was he just kind of like, oh, what's going on, and I don't know, what do I do, and who cuts the cord, and what's going on in that stable?

The image of this birth, the image of this birth, hear me carefully, I'm telling you that this is, I'm convicted and convinced of this, it is not an image in Luke's account of isolation. It is not an image of poverty.

It is not an image of desperation. It is an image of humility. And a very human entry into the world. To have a baby in this era, in this time, was a desperate thing. Anyone to have a baby. And what Mary and Joseph go through that night is similar to anybody giving birth on that night, anywhere in the known world.

They were in Bethlehem, and then the time came, which is a really easy statement to say, right? The time came, but those of you who are in the room who have given birth, is that an easy statement? The time came, oh, okay, all right, she's gonna have a baby.

I mean, there's labor, there's all of the breathing, there's the contractions, there's the, all of that is going on, and she's in pain as she gets ready to deliver the baby. It's a beautiful, amazing, earthy, scary, painful, emotional, physical, and spiritual event.

And anybody who has been in the room when a child comes into the world recognizes both how earthy it is, and how utterly spiritual it is.

Have you been there?

Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. Some of you will be there someday. But it is a, it's an amazing event, and that is what happened that night with Joseph and Mary. And it was not different.

Nothing in the text is designed to direct us to isolation. Nothing in the text indicates that a cow was the first to greet baby Jesus. Nothing indicates that Joseph served as the midwife. Delivery during this era was the realm of women for centuries.

And if we feel compelled to speculate, beyond what the text says, which I think, you know, sometimes we are. Sometimes we feel that desire to fill in the blanks, and I get that, but just let me suggest to you that, and just humbly say, if you're gonna fill in any blanks, could you do so with a historically informed perspective?

Don't have her getting an IV in the hospital, or something like that. I mean, understand the culture, understand the era that she's living in. And part and parcel to that was that Joseph was most likely not there in the room when she gave birth.

He was probably with the guys, and Mary was with the ladies, and somebody was there to provide cloth for the baby. Somebody was there to help her. And I reflect on what is a common occurrence.

Down through the millennia,.

That the claws, the swaddling that is provided for the baby. One of the first things the nurses did when Adam, Luke, and Leah were born, after they got their APGAR, what is it, APGAR score or whatever, and they got their score, and they all nailed that, by the way.

First test, and they nailed it. I was like, 90%, yes. Phil Six representing.

But, yes.

They wrapped them. They wrapped them tight. Tight enough that when Adam was born, I was actually nervous.

I was like, does he have to,.

Like, can he breathe with this? Like, I was worried, and then come to find out, I guess babies kinda like that. They like that snugness and that tightness. So, that's something that we've been doing for centuries.

That's kind of like a human habit, too. It's regular and common to humanity, and has been for centuries, and maybe even millennia, to wrap a baby tight when they come into the world. And that's, Jesus was treated just like you and me.

He was treated just like us when he came in. And due to the lack of room, a feeding trough was used as a bassinet. Where did Mary give birth? Well, I'm gonna tell you the text is not clear. Who was present when she gave birth?

Text isn't clear. Was the Messiah kicked out of everywhere before he was born? The text doesn't say, and so I don't feel comfortable drawing intense, deep theological truths from that. We know that he's gonna grow up to be rejected.

We don't have to make it up here. We know that he is going to be raised up and is gonna eventually be betrayed by those who are closest to him. So why am I going down this road? Just because I wanna burst your Christmas bubble?

No, because I wanna say what the scripture says. I want us to look at the text. I don't wanna just apply a bunch of stuff that the text doesn't say because, well, it's Christmas, and so we're supposed to say these routine things.

But let me suggest a couple of applications to our lives from this text. A couple of things that I think we should take away first, and kind of loosely with this text, is let's be students of the Bible.

Just as we look at this text and the way we've used this text, and maybe even the way that some of us have abused the text, let's study it so that we know what it actually says. We come to the text with so many assumptions that we sometimes miss what it actually is saying.

And the purpose of studying scripture should be to, you know, should not just strictly be to improve your knowledge for Bible trivia games. It shouldn't be so that you can disagree with everyone and prove them wrong.

You know, there are people who read the Bible with that in mind, is to disprove everyone. Certainly shouldn't be so that you can go around casting doubt on every nativity scene that's out there. But it's to study and to know God, to know what he says of himself, what he's doing, what he has done, and to know his love.

So study to know what he desires of you and me. Second, I see in this text the amazing sovereign hand of God, he chose Mary from Nazareth. He made a plan to move in the heart of the emperor of Rome to decree a census.

He brought Joseph and Mary to the town of Bethlehem at the time that she would go into labor and give birth to Jesus in the city that was foretold in the Old Testament. I believe that he did these things as an indicator of his movement in human history.

He gets stuff done his way and in his time. You notice that in your own life? He gets stuff done in his way and in his time. He who orchestrates the huge, big picture movements of human history can surely handle whatever is troubling you today.

He can handle it because he's in charge.

Third, Jesus arrived in humility. I do not see in this story the depth of poverty and desperation that I believe has really been way overplayed in our culture. He wasn't born in a hospital, sure, so that must have been really bad, we think, but guess what, nobody in that era was born in a hospital.

Mary gave birth in a town so packed full of people that there was no room even in the guest room to lay the baby, and so he was swaddled and slept in the carved out feeding trough in the home, maybe of a family member.

The humility of Jesus is shown by the simplicity and commonality of his birth. The Messiah came through the common but profound event of human childbirth. He could have come from the clouds. He could have just showed up.

He could have just done anything that he chose to do, but he came through that humble means. His humility should inspire humility in us all. But I think I kind of jumped the gun by saying Jesus arrived in humility as an application because I think the last one is just simply this.

Jesus arrived.

Jesus arrived.

His advent here in our text, his first advent completed. He has come to us.

God with us.

Our Emmanuel is here.

God took on flesh and dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory. Our hope rests in our king who arrived through such common means over 2 ,000 years ago, and I hope you are moved this Christmas to celebrate the glory of the advent.

Of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

This morning we're gonna take communion, and I'd encourage you to reflect on the great and glorious sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He came from heaven to be born of a virgin. He lived a sinless life, was rejected by mankind, and gave up his life as a sacrifice for those who abused him.

And we come to communion to remember his body broken for us and the juice reminds us of his blood that was shed for us. And let me suggest to you that it is very hard as a pastor to avoid mixing Easter and Christmas.

I'm not gonna be able to not do that. The two just go so, they go together in an essential way. Without Christmas, there would be no Easter. Without his coming among us, there would be no sacrifice. But equally, without Good Friday, without that sacrifice, there was no reason for him to come be one of us.

He came on a mission, he came with intention. He came on purpose to rescue you and me from our sins, to reconcile us, where we were broken and busted and really ultimately defiant and rebellious against God.

He has brought the warring factions together at his cross. And he came that all of that might be made possible through him. So I would suggest to you that you only take communion this morning if you can do so out of a heart of thankfulness.