Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. (Psalm 100:4)It is Thanksgiving week. Thanksgiving kind of snuck up on me this year. It is next Thursday and I had forgotten until someone reminded me last Thursday.
Christmas is next, of course. I will probably remember it. I don’t think I am that far gone.
But Thanksgiving is an odd day to the world. More and more I hear it called Turkey Day, a day in which for some arcane reason we eat turkey. No one knows why, goes back to the Pilgrims, a bunch of guys with buckles on their hats. They were weird anyway. Indians came for some reason to dinner.
Or at least you would think that listening to the media people. They really have no concept of what the real reason is for Thanksgiving.
I remember reading of some guy that was an unbeliever who was saying that we stop for a moment and think about all the good stuff we have to be thankful for. I guess he would thank the universe (the default god of the world) for giving him a turkey and stuff for dinner. Then he would glut himself and then watch football or something, with no other thought for the day or any more goofiness like giving thanks for stuff he bought himself.
The world just cannot figure out Thanksgiving in general. It is so easy to feel entitled, like someone owes us something. We do not feel the need to thank people for stuff. After all, we probably deserve it or something. We bought it with our own money.
But we don’t deserve it. God gave us those things and the money to buy them with and even the jobs we work. And we need to remember to be thankful for all we have, even when things do not go our way. And they don’t a lot of the time.
Remember that next Thursday when you stagger from the table to a comfortable chair, overloaded with pie and all. Be thankful to your God for more than a multitude of food. Be thankful for all we have as Americans, for all we have as Children of God, for all we have just in general.
Praise be to the One who gave it all to us. May he give us even more.
And he will when we are thankful. After all, who wants to give anything to a bunch of whiny ingrates that clamor for more? I barely want to talk to those kind of people much less give them good things. It would seem to me to be a waste. But of course, he loves us. And we praise him.
Happy Thanksgiving from Sister Ella and me here in Longton, Kansas. May your hearts be full of his grace and his love in all you do, and may the upcoming Christmas season be a good one for you and your family.
No comments:
Post a Comment
To comment, post your comment and click the anonymous button. It would be nice if you signed it so I could know who you are.
You are welcome to say anything you want as long as it is nice. If I don't like it, or it is ugly, I will take it off, place it into the garbage disposal, grind it up, and allow it to be flushed into the Gulf of Mexico where it will be eaten by a fish and then excreted where it will lie on the bottom of the ocean until it is covered up by other comments.