Thanksgiving Day
It will only be a few days until we celebrate Thanksgiving. What a wonderful time in our lives and in the lives of our families. It is a time to get together and share a wonderful meal and loving relationships. I personally think it is awesome that Thanksgiving is a national holiday. I think it is wonderful that people will slow down long enough to have some sense of thankfulness for a moment.
Throughout the Bible there are “SHOUTS,” not echos, of the thankful spirit. The Psalms are filled with the encouragement to “Give Thanks.” The people in biblical history have often reflected a spirit of selfishness which destroys the thankful spirit. The two cannot live in the same body. The New Testament encourages us from the words of the writers to be thankful in all things. Wow! All things? Really?
It is easy to be thankful for really big stuff that we especially like, but it is way more difficult to be thankful for that which appears as a negative in our lives. God allows negative things in our lives to help us grow up and become stronger. It’s mighty hard to be thankful for them, but it is all a part of His working, and we all know that He knows better than we do.
It appears that our country has moved further and further away from thankfulness. We have become a people, as a nation, who would rather “demand our rights” than just say thank you. Somehow we have developed a somewhat national idea that somebody somewhere owes us something. And, when we get it, we get it because it was due. With that mentality, it is very difficult to be thankful.
Here’s the basic deal. We came here naked and breathing. We brought nothing with us and will take nothing with us when we go. So, nothing and nothing is still nothing. The way I figure it, anything above nothing is a positive. We came here with a promise that God would love us and provide for us if we would but follow Him. How He chooses to do it, He did not necessarily say. So, anything above nothing is something for which we should be thankful. God does not owe us anything, except what He promised. His oath alone makes Him owe that. We have no right to demand anything.
So, He says to us, “Be thankful.” We are to give thanks to Him for all things. That’s His desire for us. It keeps us out of the picture and in our created place and lifts Him up as God of the universe.
Be thankful. But be thankful for more than a little turkey and pumpkin pie. Consider ever gift God has given and is giving you and let thanksgiving be a way of life and not just a national holiday.