I love this time of year – more specifically, I love Thanksgiving. The hour our family Thanksgiving celebration (a.k.a. The Coma-Inducing Feast) ends, I start looking forward to next year.  But I’ve noticed something in the last several years: stores, merchants and businesses don’t really seem to know what to do with Turkey Day. While it’s still blazing hot outside and the kids are just going back to school you start seeing Halloween decorations and paraphernalia on the shelves of your local mega-mart. And as quickly as the goblins are removed from the displays, Santa appears.  Oh, I get it, there are big bucks to be made in these two holidays, but I find it a little disheartening that we don’t really know what to do with Thanksgiving!  And it’s really sad when you consider Thanksgiving is very spiritual in it’s origins.  In fact, in 1789, Thanksgiving was designated by President George Washington as a national day for giving thanks to God.

And before I’m misunderstood, this isn’t a subtle backhand against Halloween and I’m certainly not suggesting we take any emphasis off of the day we celebrate the birth of our Savior. No, what I’m suggesting is that we don’t gloss over this day of thanks too quickly. Rather, I think we should stop, take inventory of our lives and give thanks to our Creator, God for His incredible blessings in our life. And then put things into place that will consistently remind us of just how blessed we are from one Thanksgiving to the next.

Ah, but you might be thinking, “That’s all well and good, but you don’t know me and if you did, you’d realize I don’t have a lot to give thanks for.” And on the surface it may really look that way. Perhaps you are having financial troubles that leave your pockets empty at the end of the month.  Maybe your health problems are getting you down. Maybe there is conflict in your family that has left scars and tension that you don’t know how to begin to deal with.  I empathize with all of these things and would never downplay them in any way.  But, friend, we need to put things into perspective.  Every week a million plus men and women will not survive to see a new day, and if you woke up with this morning with more ‘good’ than ‘ill’, you’re more than blessed!  If you didn’t wake up in a foxhole, behind bars, starving or being tortured, you’re ahead of more than 20 million people worldwide. If you attend a church meeting in your local house of worship without fear of being harassed, arrested or even killed, you are more blessed than about three billion people across this globe. If you have even the slightest morsel of food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back and a roof over your head (regardless of the condition of that roof), you are richer than 75 percent of the world. And let’s say none of those things apply to your situation right now…you still have a reason to praise and give thanks because God is good and His mercy is new every morning!  The psalmist wrote in Psalm 107:1, “Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.”

Friend, I believe we have a lot to give thanks for today. I encourage you to never forget that the main reason we were put on this earth as human beings to begin with is to glorify God and to give Him thanks. Let’s never fail to thank Him for his goodness and mercy.

From my family to yours: “Happy Thanksgiving!”

Pastor Jeff

pastorjeff@lwwconline.com

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