Unqualified Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving Day in America. It is supposed to be a day to give thanks to God for our blessings. It was created by the government to help our nation focus on what really matters. Everything we have is from God, and we should be thankful. The only problem is our thanks tend to be limited.

As selfish human beings, our thanks to God tend to focus on things we are happy with Him about. If He ‘gave’ us that new job we wanted, we thank Him. If He heals our sick relative in the way we want, we thank Him. So long as we get what we want, we are thankful to Him.

As I reflect upon my life this year on Thanksgiving Day, I am profoundly aware that I have nothing for which I should not thank Him for. Why should I limit my thanks only to the things I enjoy in life. Saint Paul was thankful for the thorn in his side. (see 2^nd Corinthians 12.7-10)

Instead of qualifying our thanks to God, we should simply thank Him. He already knows what we need. We should be thankful He loves us enough to protect us from ourselves. I can’t tell you how many times He has said no to my requests because He knew what I wanted would not be right for me.

We should thank Him that He never gives up on us, no matter how many times we screw it up. We should be thankful that He gave us another chance today to get it right. We should be thankful that He has not punished us as we deserve punishment for our sins and offenses.

Yes, we should thank Him for our health, but we should also thank Him for our illnesses. Our faith is made stronger when we are challenged. When we suffer our heart leans on God. We should be thankful that God listens to our hearts, no matter how silly it might be.

It isn’t bad to be thankful for the good things in life. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t limit our thanks to only the good. The ‘not-so-good’ things might seem a bit better if we are thankful for those things too.

Happy Thanksgiving!