On Thursday, November 24, 2022, we will celebrate Thanksgiving once again, as a time specifically reserved for giving thanks for the blessings that we’ve received thereupon. The holiday was born out of a harsh and devastating winter in which many immigrants to the new land, suffered and died from cold, starvation and disease. However, through the help of friends, the harvest, the following year, was plentiful, thus they celebrated by giving thanks.
Hhmm! What is that? While it is a holiday traditionally kept in the United States, globally other countries such as Canada, Brazil, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Grenada, China, Japan, Liberia, India, and Ghana celebrate a customary form of Thanksgiving as well. While the manner and purpose may vary, it is in its most simplistic custom, a form of giving thanks, for a variety of reasons, freedom, harvest, liberation, and others. While much different than its origin, today we celebrate the day (often in the absence of acknowledging thanks) by eating an abundance of food, watching endless hours of football, enjoying music and festivities, and lest we forget the most essential of them all black Fridays. While there is nothing wrong with that, this is a far cry from its original inception, in 1789 in which then President George Washington decreed it to be a day of prayer and thanks, prayer and thanks (I had to say it twice), subsequently becoming a nationally recognized holiday in 1941.
Today’s podcast is titled.
A Season of Thanks and Giving
1 Thessalonians 5:18
Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
Sometimes it can be tough to be thankful for the little things, especially in hard times. But here’s the funny thing about thankfulness. Once we begin counting our blessings, we often discover that we have a gracious plenty after all. It’s simply the change in perspective from dwelling on what we lack to focusing on what we have.
Philippians 4:6
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
Giving thanks is a show of gratitude and graciousness, through humility. It is an acknowledgment that we were unable to do it on our own. It is yielding ourselves and our needs to something far greater than ourselves (God). We every so often discover the more we have, the greater our accumulative substance and wealth, the more difficult, or should I say less likely we are to give our show of thanks the attention it deserves, because we have an abundance of everything and want for nothing. Thanks is borne out of lack, the absence of something, a critical necessity in our lives. It is manifested out of hardship, urgency, or immediate need. When nothing else could help, when we’ve lost others along the way, when we’ve survived the ravage of disease, when our substance is consumed, when there is no clear way out, when others scoff at our circumstance, and others simultaneously blame us and our actions as the cause of our suffering, when we are closed off from the world, that is when we find our way to the throne of God, and bare out the brokenness of our soul, suddenly the darkness fades and the sun shines upon us as the noon day, and God begins to move obstacle after obstacle, barrier by barrier, brick by brick, that my brothers and sisters is thanksgiving.
