Thanksgiving, hmmmm. Are We Forgetting Something?

[HKHaugan]

It’s Thanksgiving morning and I’m sure everyone is getting ready for the day. Eat a light breakfast, start the turkey and dressing, get the table set, the kids bouncing around. You may even be watching the traditional Thanksgiving Day parade on TV. For those who are alone or couples with no family near you may be going out to eat or been invited to a friend’s house for the afternoon. Whatever, wherever and whenever, the day is still marked by the air of thankfulness. If we can get outside ourselves for a moment the very sense of our being, of living, of having been given a personal life is ground for gratitude.

I remember talking to a cousin several years ago who was not a believer. In our conversation we got on the subject of being thankful. He was thankful for the wife he had always wanted, the children he loved, the job he had, where he lived and for the experience of the out-of-doors he frequently enjoyed. He was almost in tears about it but, and this is the clincher, he didn’t know who he could thank for his good life. He was just sentimentally thankful. He couldn’t reach beyond himself to see that his very existence was spiritually originated, that he was created because it pleased God, that God wanted him to have what he had and had given him the ability, the talent and the drive to achieve his place in this world. He has since died.

As we survey our life experience are we thankful beyond the sentiment that it evokes? Let’s consider maybe a few things that might inspire gratitude directed at the source of it all.

First, God Himself. The ever-present, Almighty Creator of the universe and all that is, visible and invisible.

Second, the Lord Jesus, His Son, through whom the universe was created, who became a human being and revealed God as our Father, Himself as Savior and Lord and the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God who brings the risen Lord Jesus into our hearts.

Third, Holy Scripture bringing us the content of God’s mind and heart centered in Jesus’ life, teachings and presence.

Fourth, the nature of God, His grace, love and the numberless qualities of His being with which He blesses us and fills us so we can become more like Him.
Fifth, the very idea that a Holy, pure and perfect God would care for us so much that He would send His Son to die in our place to make Himself available to each of us in personal relationship that restores and recovers us to Him and in turn to one another.

Sixth, He provides a spiritual family for us to grow in. We are children of God. We have spiritual brothers and sisters to share our lives with.

Seventh, He has given us each spiritual gifts around which we build our identity, our spiritual identity, enabling us to minister in the Holy Spirit to one another and bring those who don’t know the Lord to Him.

Eighth, He has provided the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control to be the atmosphere in which the gifts function and the Body of Christ, our spiritual family, grows.

Ninth, we have been given worship that we might honor Him as we celebrate Him in the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, to be reminded of His loving sacrifice and constant presence in our lives.

Tenth, we have been given repentance followed by forgiveness as a way to stay honest with God, maintain our relationship with Him, with the guarantee of His personal forgiveness each moment we sense Him calling us to turn around and bring our sins before Him.

Eleventh, and by no means eleventh in importance, the Cross upon which He gave His life and set it as the standard by which we understand His love for us and for all people everywhere. The Cross becomes a lifestyle of allowing ourselves to decrease so that He may increase just as John the Baptist phrased it. It is the Cross through which we see the person of Jesus emerge in the midst of all experience to become the focus to bring us out of ourselves and into God’s presence every next moment. It is the Cross that carries us from self to God and from God to others that we might become living messages of truth, faith and the eternal life He brings. The Cross, the Cross----the Cross!

So today when you are getting ready to sit down at the table in the ‘wherever’ take a few minutes to reflect on the depth of what we really have been given that makes everything else work. When you say grace remember it is by grace we have been saved and that through faith in the greatest of gifts, the Lord Jesus who has revealed the Father and given us His Holy Spirit to know and share His presence. Be blessed this day as we give thanks to Our Lord for all He has given us.