It is one of my favorite holidays this week - Thanksgiving. Between feasting, family, friends, floats, furlough and football, it always seems to be a fabulous time!
There is a long tradition of Thanksgiving in our nation, dating all the way back to the Plymouth Plantation in 1623. Although it is not a holiday found in the Bible, giving thanks is certainly a very biblical thing to do.
After celebrating a day of Thanksgiving on a couple of different calendar days, it was in 1863 that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed, by act of Congress, that our national day of Thanksgiving be celebrated on the last Thursday of every November. He stated in his Thanksgiving Proclamation that it is “…announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord… But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us and we have vainly imagined, by the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own… It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people…”
I think there is inherent in the idea of giving thanks that it must be directed somewhere - actually directed to someone, because it doesn’t really make sense to give thanks to anything other than a personal being that can understand and appreciate gratitude. And of course, seeing that all good things come from God makes it appropriate to thank Him.
There are dozens of verses in the Bible that exhort us to give thanks - one is 1 Chronicles 16:34 which says “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!”
I do sympathize with those who are suffering and experiencing hardships during this season. I think sometimes one of the best antidotes to difficult situations is to simply remember to be thankful for the things that we can be thankful for. And there are always things to be thankful for: if you ate today, be thankful - one in nine people in the world suffer from chronic undernourishment; if you drank clean water today, be thankful - almost 800 million people do not have access to clean water; if you have the freedom to worship God, be thankful – more than 50 countries in the world have significant persecution toward Christians; if you have heard of Jesus Christ and the good news of hope and redemption that He brings to the world, be thankful – more than two billion people have never heard the Gospel. I could go on and on because there are many things and ways to be thankful.
We occasionally play a little game together as a family that can be played anywhere, by anyone of any age (we’ve played with ages ranging from two to 70), by any number of players (even one), and is always good to play. It’s a simple game that we call “I thank God for…”, and as you could probably guess, we just take turns saying “I thank God for” and finish it with something that we are thankful for. The only losers in the game are those who do not participate, so generally, everyone wins. It is really a wonderful game!
As we go through this holiday season, let’s remember to thank God for who He is and what He has done, because that is the real reason to celebrate this (and every other) season.
Psalm 100:4-5 says “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.”
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