Posted by
BentOuttaRound on Sunday, November 19, 2006 5:46:50 PM
With the coming Thanksgiving holiday, I have been thinking once again about what this holiday means. I believe it was three years ago when I shared the holiday meal at a friend's home. It was a great experience. The food was as good as it could have been, the group of people was as comfortable to be around as my own family, and there was a general sense of "thankfulness" that one would expect at such a gathering. Then, as is wont to occur when given the opportunity, my mind began to wander.
I started to dwell on the incongruity of the moment. I was surrounded by a truly wonderful, gifted, talented, and heroic family and group of friends. We all truly were enjoying each other's company and conversation. And I truly believe that we were all celebrating thanks. The problem, from my perspective, was realizing that none of the people I was celebrating Thanksgiving with had Biblically accepted Christ as Savior. In fact, some of these people did not believe in a knowable God. This led to the question in my mind, "To whom are you thankful?"
I look back now on that night, and I look around at the billions of calories to be consumed this week in the name of thankfulness, and realize that so little gratitude will actually be offered up to God. Too many people are going to be thankful to some unnamed, and probably unthought-of abstraction. They will verbalize to their loved ones a general sense of well-being and security. They will reassure one another of the mutual love they have for each other. But they won't be able to acknowledge the source of these circumstances, because they don't know Him. These people are going to likely chalk up their good fortune to just that -- Good Fortune; or worse, with a self-righteous tip of the hat to just that -- Self.
If there is such a thing as a "Christian holiday," Thanksgiving would be it. It is a commemoration of the thanks given by Christians to God for their blessings, regardless of the difficulties they had to go through to appreciate them. Today, it is a chance for us to acknowledge the God that continues to bless, individually and globally, regardless of the difficulties He allows us to experience. It is, however, each individual's responsibility to allow these blessings to bring us closer to Him. By the way, the difficulties are blessings to that end as well.
I am thankful to God. I am thankful first and foremost for my salvation. I am thankful for the circumstances that brought me to the end of myself and back to a pursuit of God. I am thankful for my family -- the one I come from, the one I married into, and the one I have started. I am thankful to be born in a time and place in which I can declare the preceding with no fear of physical harm. I am endlessly thankful to God.
My prayer is that my nation can return to that state of earnest gratitude to the God of the Bible. Otherwise, we can be assured of a return of the difficulties that might bring that gratitude back.
Happy Thanksgiving.