Dispatches

One of the best prayers in the Prayer Book–and that is, of course, an extremely competitive category–is the General Thanksgiving found at the conclusion of Morning and Evening Prayer. In fact, it was not actually originally included as part of those short daily liturgies. Rather, the General Thanksgiving appeared in the collection of “Prayers and Thanksgivings Upon Several Occasions,” found immediately before the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels in The Book of Common Prayer 1662. This little section of the Prayer Book was comprised of petitions and declarations of gratitude for various necessities of human life including rain, peace, and relief from famine. They were permitted to be read “before the two final prayers of the Litany, or of Morning and Evening Prayer,” and correspond to the Prayers and Thanksgivings section of the current Prayer Book, a wonderful resource found beginning on page 809.

But the General Thanksgiving became so beloved that in 1979 the revisers of The Book of Common Prayer included it as one of the final prayers at the Daily Office. We read it each day at Morning Prayer in Keenan Chapel, and each Sunday at Evensong in the Cathedral. It has always been an important and meaningful prayer for me, and has become especially so in this poignant season.

Giving “most humble and hearty thanks for all [God’s] goodness and loving-kindness” pretty perfectly sums up what I am feeling these days.

I am humbly and heartily thankful for that day in late 2013 when, as I sat in my office as curate of Christ Church Greenwich, the telephone unexpectedly rang and a kind voice on the line said “This is Tim Jones, dean of Trinity Cathedral in Columbia, South Carolina, and I wonder whether you would be interested in discerning a call to serve as our canon for adult formation.”

I am humbly and heartily thankful for those first two years that Debby and I spent in Columbia with Eleanor and Fritz–just the two of them back then! Fritz took his first steps in our home here on Hope Avenue, and I can still remember each turn of the short walk to Ella’s preschool class at the Montessori School of Columbia.

I am humbly and heartily thankful for the opportunity I had to learn from the staff and lay leaders alongside whom I served in those days, as my role expanded from canon for adult formation to canon for adult and children's formation to canon for formation. I was responsible for cradle to grave formation by the end of my first tour of duty, and grateful for the chance to know members of this community in every age group.

I am humbly and heartily thankful for the preparation that Trinity gave me to serve as rector of Christ Church, Cooperstown, and for the opportunity to grow in my ministry in that wonderful parish, even as our family grew with the arrival of Ruthie and Myles.

I am humbly and heartily thankful even for the enormous challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic, though I never imagined in the midst of it that I could one day say those words! I have often reflected that, were it not for the experience of that trying season of ministry, I do not know that I would have been open to the possibility of discerning a return to Trinity as your dean.

And oh, how humbly and heartily thankful I am for these last four-and-a-half years! My Dispatches have occasionally been known to run long, but even if this penultimate message were to be my absolute longest there still would not be space to list all of the joys and blessings our family has received in this season. To serve in this place, to work with our team, to preach for all of you, to help host the ordination and consecration of the ninth bishop of our diocese, to baptize and marry and bury so many beloved members of our community, to induct my own children into the Trinity Choirs–for these and numberless other things I am so humbly and heartily thankful.

And I am humbly and heartily thankful for this next chapter of ministry for Trinity and for my family, and for the new privilege of serving the people of St. Martin's Church in Houston. Even as we grieve our separation from all of you, we are mindful of God's unfailing goodness and lovingkindness. I am humbly and heartily thankful for your love and prayers in this season, and I assure you that we will be praying constantly for Trinity in the days ahead.

For His faithfulness, and for all the blessings of this life–but above all for His inestimable love in the redemption of the world through our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory–may the Lord make and keep us always humbly and heartily thankful!