Some Real Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving Day is just a pleasant thought in my mind, I don’t think I ever remember one that I would consider a bad memory. Family was around, sometimes family we did not see that often. It was the sum total of giving thanks for our food, because we ate the most wonderful things, some of everything. Everyone loved to tell the story about when Grandma brought out the second turkey! Being at their farm, those were the best Thanksgiving feasts, that place was a bit of heaven on earth for me. Then later in the day they would get it back out and somehow we’d eat some more.
God gave us food for celebrating, but there is another level of celebrating that goes with Thanksgiving. It is a holiday set aside for giving thanks. Giving thanks is especially important for a follower of Jesus Christ. “In everything give thanks, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). When it says something is God’s will, we take it very seriously, that simply means it is something HE wants from us. And He deserves it too, because everything good we have comes from Him. “Every good thing given, and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (James 1:17).
We are to give thanks in everything, so that would imply we would do it often, in all manner of circumstances. Our family has made a practice of thanking Him for our food, at each meal that we enjoy together. The Thanksgiving feast is a reminder in a comprehensive sense that God’s providence is a good thing and for all of us, a really big deal.
Something that comes to mind for me at every Thanksgiving Dinner is we are all around, in very pleasant circumstances, getting ready to eat this wonderful meal, of which the scents are filling our minds with all manner of anticipation. Then a senior member of the family says we should give thanks, and you hope he doesn’t go on too long, I don’t know if I can wait any longer! It always comes to my mind that I can do better than that. And this year I am going to give it a shot. Could I give God time that is all His? Just asking the question is a rebuke to me.
I think of the different times that people in the Bible stopped, usually after a victory or the culmination of a task, and the scripture records their going back over everything, even years and generations, to observe the hand of God in their lives. I think of Nehemiah 9 when the people praised God for returning them from captivity and rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. In thirty-three verses they remembered the hand of God, the glory of God in their lives and in the life of their nation and family. They even remembered the times they blew it and what God did in their lives.
Could we do that? Go over the last year and how He has brought us through to this point, even with all the bad things going on in the world right now. God is still the same, and He has always been faithful to us, providing for us. Go over the last five years, how about over a career so far and even the experiences we had growing up that shaped us. I think then we get what thankfulness is all about, and see what God has done to shape us, to provide for us. Let’s see if we can do a real Thanksgiving this year. This one will probably work best if we are not ready to eat!
