Creative writing is something I’ve always enjoyed. Nowadays it’s confined mainly to devotionals like what you are reading now. For the previous twenty-four years, my creative writing was focused on crafting the substance for worship elements such as sermons, prayers, and liturgy.

I’ve never written a book or a song, but there is one common element they share with sermons…they almost always have titles. In a good way, creating a sermon title is often a wrestling match for my mind. I enjoy the challenge of finding just the right combination and economy of words. I want a title to be intriguing and engaging, but not too revealing. I consider how titles can have elements of consonance like alliteration, rhythm, or rhyme. I ponder if a title should create a funny, strange, hopeful, shocking, or ironic reaction. I try to avoid a totally obvious and uncreative title or one that is misleading and manipulative.

Be it for a song, book, or sermon, I like a good title.

So here is an Elvis trivia question: What was the title of Elvis Presley’s very first #1 hit?

As a native Memphian born in the 1960’s I have always had an awareness of Elvis Presley. Though he is often called “The King of Rock & Roll”, he also had numerous songs hit #1 on the Billboard charts in the genres of Country, Pop, Rhythm & Blues, Easy Listening, Gospel, and Christmas/Holiday music.

The answer is a song with a great title: “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”. It hit #1 on the Billboard Country/Western (though it sounds more rockabilly) music chart in February of 1956. Written by Charlie Feathers and Stanley Kesler, it is a song about a lost love, the heartache left in its place, and the frustration caused by failed efforts to forget about it and move on. It is a short song…less than three minutes…and doesn’t even have a chorus. Just a tag line repeated twice that became its title.

A creative title can also be used to facilitate other thoughts, reflections, or considerations beyond the connection to what it originally represented. This year, it could apply in a beneficial way to our Thanksgiving celebrations.

Have you ever noticed how we tend to remember the things we’d like to forget, and forget the things we should remember? This often happens when we get our emotional priorities out of order, usually because of pride or ego. A solution could be that we purposefully look for our blessings before our burdens. This causes us to have to put down some part of, or all our burdens and force ourselves to count and claim our blessings first. We will often find we have so many blessings that we cannot go back and pick up all the burdens. The result is we will not want to give up a blessing just to make room for the burden again. Thus, we take back only those we still need to remember and forget about the others. This exercise obviously isn’t physical, but more mental…emotional…and spiritual.

The past few years have been…well, indescribable. I don’t even want to create a title for what we have experienced, regardless of our personal opinions. We have experienced relational chaos, theological turmoil, institutional mayhem, and cultural conflict. I often feel like I am sifting through the rubble of “what was” looking for something to help me determine “what is” so I can create a compass point to guide me into “what’s next”.

So, for this Thanksgiving I am going to work to remember to forget about those things that may have happened that have been disappointing to me…and I am going to work to not forget to remember the reality that God offers blessings to us every day. In the end, I believe not only will we discover that we have more blessings than burdens, but that some of the burdens we go back and pick up, actually contain elements of blessing.

I pray that your Thanksgiving, which should be more of a daily practice than a date on the November calendar, is filled with a cornucopia of God’s goodness, which then creates a bounty of gratitude, from which we may give thanks. May begin this journey of gratefulness begin with words to a song written by Henry Smith, with the simple, yet fulfilling title of “Give Thanks”, based on 2nd Corinthians 8:9: “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” (NRSV)

Give thanks with a grateful heart, give thanks to the Holy One; give thanks, because he’s given
Jesus Christ, his Son. And now let the weak say ‘I am strong’, let the poor say ‘I am rich’, because of what the Lord has done for us; Give thanks…