By Lanie Dinecola
Thanksgiving, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is that holiday in which we celebrate the bountiful harvest of gifts and blessings that God has graciously given to us. For this reason, Thanksgiving is probably my very favourite holiday. It has yet to be tainted by commercialism. If we didn’t love the holiday so much as a nation, the celebrations would probably cease due to the mere fact that we are not prompted by the media to remember it. The retail stores seem to skip it entirely, moving from Halloween to Christmas. Besides this, there are so many things about Thanksgiving that make it an enjoyable time of the year. It would appear as if the entire premise of Thanksgiving has remained mostly intact. Though, I guess we are guilty of making it a holiday to celebrate our gluttonous tendencies… but that’s a whole different issue!
Most importantly, Thanksgiving marks that time of year when we begin to slow down the unnecessary things of life and focus in on the precious things, the blessings, the graces.
This is easy to do when our blessings are obvious ones. When everything is wonderful. When the coffers are full, the pantry is stocked, the wardrobe displays new clothes to choose from. Sometimes, our visible blessings are positively pouring over the edges. We see a proverbial cornucopia of thanksgiving before us. A table laid with abundance and we easily offer back gratitude for the gifts we’ve been given and the mercy shown us.
Sometimes, though, we have to search hard for those blessings. Sometimes, the table looks bare, the cup is dry, and the weather is harsh on our back. The weight of the world seems to rest heavy on our shoulders. Sometimes, thanksgiving doesn’t flow from the tongue so freely. The search is long and hard for a list of good things and it’s easy to neglect the search altogether. There are times when we stare God in the face and challenge his very authority. Threaten him. Demand him to explain why he would give so little. Why he would hold back so much from us. Doesn’t he love us? Doesn’t he love me?
In her book One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, Ann Voskamp explores the power of gratitude. In a moment when she feels that she is on the receiving end of curse, not blessing- she encounters the revelation that:
“When I realize that it is not God who is in my debt but I who am in His great debt, then doesn’t all become gift? For He might not have.”
How true that is! True gratitude comes from a shift in perspective. A shift in our attitude. When we truly realize that all we receive from God is laced with mercy, grace, and gift- we will begin to see our hurt feelings, our anger, our ingratitude transform into true Thanksgiving. Our bad attitude turns to great gratitude!
Ann talks about the hard blessings; the hard bread. How we, like greedy children, snatch good, easy blessings from the hand of God but flinch and snarl when the blessing is harder to swallow. When it’s not so easy to distinguish its goodness. When it seems disguised in curse and difficult times. When the bread is hard.
The bread may be hard, but it is not stale. It is not out of date, it is not expired, it is not bad for your health. It is the broken hearts that experience healing, the empty bank accounts that see provision, the hungry stomachs that are fed.
We see the holiness and humanity of God when we stand in troubled times. For He is often harder to detect when life runs smooth- mostly because we forget to look for him.
“Adversity introduces a man to himself”
…a wise man once said, and it also affords us the opportunity to stand before God and see him for who he is- our Creator, our Deliverer, our Provider, and the most passionate Lover of our soul. He knows our greatest need and our most secret thoughts. We are never far from the listening ear, the healing hand, or the giving heart of God.
All he gives is good and worthy of heartfelt Thanksgiving.
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