Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living

Who can forget the wonders he performs? How gracious and merciful is our Lord! Psalm 111:4

 

Somerset Maugham liked Maxim’s restaurant in Paris so well that he used that restaurant to stage one of the 20thcentury’s most popular novels The Razor’s Edge; but it was not Maugham that first put Maxim’s on the map. It was an aspiring Hungarian musician who was very much down on his luck when he and his bride ate at a then obscure restaurant in Paris known as—yes, Café Maxim. When it was time for Franz Lehar to pay the bill for the meal, he reached for his money in his wallet and felt nothing. Frantically he searched his pockets again. He thought, “It had to be there!” But, no, it was missing. He had been the victim of a pickpocket and not only was his money missing, but his return train tickets back home to Vienna.

Franz tried to explain what had happened, making promises of payment at a later time, but the skeptical waiter thought, “Sure, I’ve heard that line a thousand times,” and he called the manager. But the manager saw something in the face and eyes of the man who stood before him that told him he was telling the truth.

The young man assured him, “Sir, you will never regret this generosity of yours. I promise to make you and your restaurant famous. My ambition is to write an opera, and I shall put your restaurant in it.”

The manager, whose name is unknown, surely thought, “I’ll just be happy to get a remittance from him, paying for the meal.” But to his great surprise some five years later, “The Merry Widow” premiered at the Theater an der Wein in Vienna, and Café Maxim was front and center as eligible bachelors courted the rich merry widow. For a century now, people, having heard about Café Maxim, have sought out the restaurant, bringing well more than a thousand-fold return from the promise made by a distraught crime-victim long ago.

Was Lehar grateful for the confidence and trust placed in him? Obviously! Gratitude is an interesting expression of thanks, something only humans understand. Only those created in the image of God understand the implications of being thankful for something and to someone.

Obviously the Pilgrims that came to the Cape Cod in the 17thcentury were grateful to an Abnaki Indian whose name was Samoset. He and a friend named Squanto—both of whom spoke English—taught the settlers to grow corn, tap maple trees and farm the sea. At the end of that first harvest, November 29 was proclaimed a day of thanksgiving. Of course, the Indians were honored guests, but the pilgrims recognized God as the ultimate source of blessing, One who had used two unknown Indians to sustain them.

Gratitude, also known as thanksgiving, is not simply an American invention celebrated in a holiday better known for turkey and cranberry sauce than for giving thanks for God’s gracious blessing. Many nations observe an official day of thanksgiving of one kind or another, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Korea, Liberia, and Switzerland.

A closing thought, something to carry with you throughout the day and week. It is impossible to be genuinely grateful without two things: identifying what you are thankful for, and to whom you are thankful.

Franz Lehar was grateful that he was allowed him to leave the restaurant without payment instead of going to a Paris jail for the night, and he knew to whom he was indebted—not the disbelieving waiter but the manager who trusted him.

Remember, gratitude involves specifics and individuals. It’s not a “have a nice one” sort of nebulous thing.  In a secular culture that often hesitates to mention “Thanksgiving to Almighty God for all his blessings”—the term Governor Bradford used in 1621–never forget what gratitude is all about.

Resource reading: Isaiah 12: 4-6