What are you thankful for? I’m sure that with thanksgiving
this past week, this question has been asked thousands of times. Perhaps it was
asked at your table and you answered a generic question such as “my house, my
family, my stuff*”, and these are all valid, so don’t get all
discouraged, but I’m going to head down a slightly different track. Side note:
I saw a picture that said “Only in America do we celebrate thankfulness and
then the next day go fight people to get things we don’t have.” This is funny,
but also sadly true. I’m also not here to criticize Black Friday, because I
enjoy it as well, but we seriously need to take a good look at our thankfulness
life. Now, the start to this article is a bit strange, but bear with me, and
hopefully you’ll see what I’m getting at.
When are we
most thankful? Well, thanksgiving aside, we are generally thankful when someone
does something for us. Maybe your parents take you to Disney World, or maybe
your little sister does your chores for you when you’re sick, or someone takes
you out for pizza randomly, etc. When are we least thankful? Normally when things are going wrong, or when
someone messes up a project that you’ve spent seven hours working on, or when
you’re two pages from finishing that novel you’ve been reading for two months,
and your mom calls you to come and finish a chore. Figure out what is wrong
with this scenario: You raked all of the leaves on your ¾ acre yard and are
finally sitting down to watch Lord of the
Rings: Return of the King, and you have just enough time to finish it
before you have to go to bed. Then, your mom asks you to help your dad take all
of the leaves to the dump before dark. This will take one more grueling hour of
work. Is your first response to say, “Thank you so much for having me work for
another hour, and allowing me to rake our yard*”?
When is the
most important time to be thankful? That’s easy, always! 1 Thessalonians
5:12-22 is entitled (at least in my Bible) “various exhortations” and it is one
of my favorite passages (but maybe I’m just weird). If you want a cut-and-dried
set of commands, look here! 1
Thessalonians 5:18 is actually one of the longer commands, which says, “In everything
give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” In
EVERYTHING, give thanks. That basically means that it doesn’t matter what your
day is like, it doesn’t matter how sick you are, it doesn’t matter how poor you
are; what matters is that you give thanks. We all have something. Some days it
may feel like we don’t have much or don’t have anything, but you always have
something to be thankful for.
Thankfulness
may seem like a self-focus, but it is actually an outward focus. Thankfulness
is not (or shouldn’t be) “look at what I have” but instead, “look at what God
has given me, through other people.” When we think we have nothing to be
thankful for, that is a lie, and it is a self-focused mentality. I often think
of a song entitled “Count Your Blessings” when I think of thankfulness, and
that really captures the essence of what thankfulness is. Or in the Doxology
when we sing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow…” A lot of times
throughout scripture, we see people “giving thanks” and you probably already
know that another term for this is “praying”.
Now, this
article really boils down into one sentence: thankfulness is an outward-focused
expression of gratitude for the blessings provided by God. I’m going to get as
practical as possible here, and tell you one thing that you can always be
thankful for: Jesus Christ paying the price for our sins by a brutal death on
the cross. That, and that alone, is better than the best day a person can have.
Thankfulness is defined as “full of thanks or gratitude” and that’s what we, as
Christians should be; full of gratitude.
* My guess is that somewhere near 80% of the people who
were asked this question answered one of these three answers
* Unless it’s said sarcastically (which I may have done
before)
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