Monday, October 11, 2010

How to Thank on Thanksgiving


"Celebrate the Feast of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field. Celebrate the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field.” Exodus 23:16.

I found the title for this blog in the Postmedia News. “This should be interesting,” I thought, “a piece on how to be thankful.” And then followed several paragraphs on thanking your hostess for an invitation to thanksgiving dinner! How paltry, when Thanksgiving is a time of thankfulness to God for his bounteous provision.

Of course, practical atheists—those who may believe in a God of some kind, but consider Him irrelevant to life—have a problem: when they are thankful, they have no one to be thankful to! Just thank those who prepared the meal but had nothing to do with its provision. Scripture is clear, lack of thankfulness to God is the first step to sidelining Him and descending into folly.

Romans 1:21 reminds us, “although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” It’s a bit like doing a shirt or blouse up, starting with the wrong button, all subsequent buttons are out of place. Failing to be thankful to God distorts all our other thinking.

But be careful of criticizing others; the same omission may be affecting our walk with God. There’s nothing like making a list of all the things we can be thankful for to give us a fresh perspective on life. Even in extremity, we can recognize God’s goodness and provision, especially his grace and forgiveness toward us.

This Thanksgiving is the perfect opportunity.

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