Thanksgiving is about God
A few months ago, I was swapping songs with a friend and remember something she said when we talked about a few Lifehouse (one of my favorite bands) songs. Lifehouse is a band of Christians that make good music that talks about their relationship with God but isn't totally known as a "Christian" band. However, when talking about the songs "Everything" and "Broken," she would always talk about the lyrics in this way: "I don't know how you can listen to that and not think about God." Thinking about it and musing over the lyrics of these songs, unless you're mind is really far off from God it's hard to think about the songs any other way, even though there's really no mention of "God" or "Jesus" in them. It's kind of enhanced my experience listening to their music, which already rocks.
I had the same epiphany about Thanksgiving today. I thought as I was getting my TJ's waffles warmed, my coffee made, listening to my cat make weird noises while my brother pets him (which is a Sherlock thing to do)... how can you really celebrate Thanksgiving and not think about God? It kind of goes this way...
When you give thanks for something, essentially what you are doing is admitting that you received the good thing you have because of the generosity of someone else. I guess you can thank yourself if you get a good thing because you earned it, but essentially the thankfulness never comes because you are proud of yourself that you've earned something great. Thankfulness comes because you are humbled by the generosity of another who gave you a gift and whom in your heart you feel somehow obliged to show gratitude.
So a holiday like Thanksgiving comes around in which we give thanks for the good things in our life that we are grateful for. Ultimately, if we are truly "thankful" for these things then we did not earn them or generate them ourselves. We ultimately received them as a gift from someone else. What are we ultimately thankful for: our life, our health, our families, our parents, having a job, being provided for physically and spiritually... most of these things ultimately, we have no control over. We get them at birth or in the sense that we are thankful for our own family (meaning wife and kids) then we can look back at the circumstances that created that family and attest that we were not ultimately in control. We usually feel that we owe thanks for those things because they feel like, and I would say are, gifts and not things we earned.
Now if you don't believe in God and truly believe that we came about through millions or billions of years of evolution through the premordial soup and are a product of random chance, then what I just said probably made no sense to you. However, even if you do I'm sure something emotionally resonated in you that this sense of gratitude and unearned gifts must be somehow true or might be true. There's too much that can't be explained by chance, fate, or luck and life has just been TOO GOOD for me, unexplainably good, to just go on without any urge in my being to thank someone or something for making it so.
Making a few leaps, when you think about it who else but God can you look to and ultimately give up the gratitude that is deserving of all of the good gifts we give thanks for while scarfing down on turkey at Thanksgiving? Can you thank your parents? Sure. I do... and they rock. They put up with me for 18 years and provided for me all along the way. But you know, as thankful as I am for my parents and their contribution to my life, they ultimately passed down what they received themselves. Can you thank the fact you're an American? Sure. This is a great country. I'm very thankful to live here! :) However have you thought about the fact that if you live in the U.S. that you are only about 5% of the world's population and the odds of you being born in a Third World country is much higher than being born an American? You can thank your great work ethic that you're in the place you are professionally, however you didn't get to choose your talents when you are born... those came out of the box and you used them and built upon them.
Ultimately, everything we have is a gift. Ultimately, when we look at our lives on Turkey Day and have that thought of gratitude, we are thankful to a being who IS in control, loves us, and has created us with the ability to do great things. It's hard to explain how much our lives rock without coming to that conclusion, if we're truly honest with ourselves.
The Bible calls this "grace" or "unmerited favor" - it means that God loves us just because He loves us. We are His prized creation, He values us tremendously, and He desires that we will accept His offer of relationship through the work of Jesus. He does good to us not because we deserve it but because He wants to do good to us. When He sent His son to die on the cross to save us He didn't do it because He thought we'd do some great thing for Him to make us earn it... He did it because He desires a relationship with us to the extent that He would sacrifice His own son in order for us to have it. The best I've seen it worded is this: After Paul tells the church in Ephesus about all of the magnificent things they have because they are in this relationship with God through Jesus, he tells them "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." (Eph 2:8-9) No one that receives a gift and truly "gets it" boasts about the gift, they thank the giver. This is what, when we embrace the spirit of Thanksgiving, do when we thank our Heavenly Father who holds our lives in His hands and knows us by name for the good things we know ultimately come from Him.
And ultimately, gratefulness is the best place to be. It's cool that we get one day out of the year to really focus on it and what it truly means. I hope that we would all take the time out to realize what we are doing this year when we give thanks tomorrow.
So...
Thank the ones in your life that have invested in your life.
Thank the people that make your life as good as it is.
And ultimately, thank God that He's allowed you to experience all that and more.
I had the same epiphany about Thanksgiving today. I thought as I was getting my TJ's waffles warmed, my coffee made, listening to my cat make weird noises while my brother pets him (which is a Sherlock thing to do)... how can you really celebrate Thanksgiving and not think about God? It kind of goes this way...
When you give thanks for something, essentially what you are doing is admitting that you received the good thing you have because of the generosity of someone else. I guess you can thank yourself if you get a good thing because you earned it, but essentially the thankfulness never comes because you are proud of yourself that you've earned something great. Thankfulness comes because you are humbled by the generosity of another who gave you a gift and whom in your heart you feel somehow obliged to show gratitude.
So a holiday like Thanksgiving comes around in which we give thanks for the good things in our life that we are grateful for. Ultimately, if we are truly "thankful" for these things then we did not earn them or generate them ourselves. We ultimately received them as a gift from someone else. What are we ultimately thankful for: our life, our health, our families, our parents, having a job, being provided for physically and spiritually... most of these things ultimately, we have no control over. We get them at birth or in the sense that we are thankful for our own family (meaning wife and kids) then we can look back at the circumstances that created that family and attest that we were not ultimately in control. We usually feel that we owe thanks for those things because they feel like, and I would say are, gifts and not things we earned.
Now if you don't believe in God and truly believe that we came about through millions or billions of years of evolution through the premordial soup and are a product of random chance, then what I just said probably made no sense to you. However, even if you do I'm sure something emotionally resonated in you that this sense of gratitude and unearned gifts must be somehow true or might be true. There's too much that can't be explained by chance, fate, or luck and life has just been TOO GOOD for me, unexplainably good, to just go on without any urge in my being to thank someone or something for making it so.
Making a few leaps, when you think about it who else but God can you look to and ultimately give up the gratitude that is deserving of all of the good gifts we give thanks for while scarfing down on turkey at Thanksgiving? Can you thank your parents? Sure. I do... and they rock. They put up with me for 18 years and provided for me all along the way. But you know, as thankful as I am for my parents and their contribution to my life, they ultimately passed down what they received themselves. Can you thank the fact you're an American? Sure. This is a great country. I'm very thankful to live here! :) However have you thought about the fact that if you live in the U.S. that you are only about 5% of the world's population and the odds of you being born in a Third World country is much higher than being born an American? You can thank your great work ethic that you're in the place you are professionally, however you didn't get to choose your talents when you are born... those came out of the box and you used them and built upon them.
Ultimately, everything we have is a gift. Ultimately, when we look at our lives on Turkey Day and have that thought of gratitude, we are thankful to a being who IS in control, loves us, and has created us with the ability to do great things. It's hard to explain how much our lives rock without coming to that conclusion, if we're truly honest with ourselves.
The Bible calls this "grace" or "unmerited favor" - it means that God loves us just because He loves us. We are His prized creation, He values us tremendously, and He desires that we will accept His offer of relationship through the work of Jesus. He does good to us not because we deserve it but because He wants to do good to us. When He sent His son to die on the cross to save us He didn't do it because He thought we'd do some great thing for Him to make us earn it... He did it because He desires a relationship with us to the extent that He would sacrifice His own son in order for us to have it. The best I've seen it worded is this: After Paul tells the church in Ephesus about all of the magnificent things they have because they are in this relationship with God through Jesus, he tells them "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." (Eph 2:8-9) No one that receives a gift and truly "gets it" boasts about the gift, they thank the giver. This is what, when we embrace the spirit of Thanksgiving, do when we thank our Heavenly Father who holds our lives in His hands and knows us by name for the good things we know ultimately come from Him.
And ultimately, gratefulness is the best place to be. It's cool that we get one day out of the year to really focus on it and what it truly means. I hope that we would all take the time out to realize what we are doing this year when we give thanks tomorrow.
So...
Thank the ones in your life that have invested in your life.
Thank the people that make your life as good as it is.
And ultimately, thank God that He's allowed you to experience all that and more.
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