By the time you are reading this article, Thanksgiving will have passed. The leftover turkey and all the fixings have either been sent home with others or they are sitting in your refrigerator waiting to be consumed. Many have survived the preparation of the meal and have slept off the effects of consuming too much turkey. Perhaps the nausea of football games aided you in your sleep.
Consider with me for a moment that the holiday of Thanksgiving is more than eating too much food and watching football games all day long. The significance of Thanksgiving is in the name itself. We are to be thankful not just on one day a year before the frenzy of Black Friday & Cyber Monday begins. Rather we are to give thanks every day of the year.
Holidays like Thanksgiving help remind us of things we tend to forget. Some have forgotten that they are a part of families who love them and care for them deeply. Some have forgotten how deeply their husband or wife loves them. Some choose to ignore how much their parents and family members care about their wellbeing.
A holiday like Thanksgiving is helpful because we begin to slow down and consider these things that we normally do not consider throughout the rest of the year. We can easily become too busy and focused on whatever is in front of us that we have neglected our spouse, our children, our parents, our family to appreciate what they mean to us. We can easily become too embittered when our spouse, our children, our parents, our family do not love us in the way that we prefer.
Consider the words we find written by the Apostle Paul to the church in Thessalonica. Paul was forced out of town at night because some of the rabbles set the city in an uproar. Yet, he instructs the church in Thessalonica to give thanks in every circumstance (1 Thess. 5:18). They were to give thanks when their plans did not come to fruition. There is nothing pleasant about being run out of town under the cover of darkness. Yet, they were to give thanks.
There are many reasons many do not wish to give thanks. From a human perspective, many are justified in such a desire. Please consider this today. You are not the only one to suffer. Even the Lord Jesus suffered. He suffered not because of evil he had done, but he suffered precisely because he did no evil. Rather, he came to absorb the judgment and the just punishment for all the evil that has ever been done in human history. He absorbed that punishment so that you could know the deep love of God and know that a day is coming when all that is wrong in the world will be made right once again. That my friend is the most profound reason for giving thanks in every circumstance.
