Thanksgiving

In a lot of ways the Thanksgiving holiday began different than how we celebrate it today.

With New Years, we look forward to the coming year. We make plans and resolutions for a better tomorrow. Today, we usually use Thanksgiving as an opportunity to spend time with family, to have a day off from work and to start our shopping for the soon coming Christmas season. If we hold to a little more of the tradition, we also use Thanksgiving to reflect on the last year and all the blessings it has held and forward to what next year might bring.

As children we never had a care in the world. We were blissfully ignorant to all that is wrong in the world. We had never experienced anything “bad”. That made this last part of the Thanksgiving celebration a lot easier. It was easy to see light and life, joy and goodness in most things. As we’ve grown, though, we can sometimes find it more difficult to see the things we have to be thankful for. Our eyes have now been opened to the things wrong in the world, both through experience and just learned understanding and basic education. As we get older, we experience and accumulate more hurt and pain, more grief and loss. It becomes increasingly more natural to see the negative and hurtful things in the world and to be hurt by those things. It becomes more difficult to shake off the things that happen to us or the losses we go through along the way, to get back up when we get knocked down. It’s no longer second nature for most of us to be happy or to be positive. It becomes a fight, an active choice to be that way to line a life of Thanksgiving.

Here’s the cool thing though. Not only on Thanksgiving, the day that serves as our reminder to be thankful, but every day we do have a choice about being thankful or not, about being positive and happy in the midst of trial or heartache. We can choose to see the good in ANY situation and be thankful for whatever it may be, for where God is taking us through it all, for the journey.

There will always be something to be negative or offended or hurt about. There will always also be something or someone to be thankful for. It comes down to our mindset and choice to recognize those things, though. It’s up to each one of us how we see the lives we live. We can make excuses or we can make our minds up to be thankful no matter what.

Psalm 9:1

I will give thanks to you, LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.

Phil 4:6-7

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Psalm 106:1

Praise the LORD.Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever

1 Thes 5:18

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus

Phil 4:8

Finally, believers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable and worthy of respect, whatever is right and confirmed by God’s word, whatever is pure and wholesome, whatever is lovely and brings peace, whatever is admirable and of good repute; if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think continually on these things [center your mind on them, and implant them in your heart].

I leave us with that on this sixty something degree, beautiful November day of Thanksgiving. In this coming year, let’s be more purposeful and intentional with our thanks to God and our thanks for all He has given us, even if it was born out of hardship. Let’s seek out the good in any and every situation and watch the God of peace transform our lives one day at a time, one moment at a time. There is much to be thankful for… not just on Thanksgiving…if we’ll only open our eyes and choose to see more clearly.

Happy Thanksgiving!