Thanks Living is Faithful Living

We all love Thanksgiving because of many things, but one reason it seems to be our favorite, is that people love the emphasis on giving thanks. We need this time to remind us of all our blessings.

I personally love it because it is a time for none other than to slow down, spend time with family and friends, to eat and remember our blessings.

I realize that the idea for Thanksgiving has been around for a long time.
In the past people took time out at the end of the year after all the crops
came in and gave thanks for a bountiful harvest. In time it became an official holiday, and what better reason to celebrate than to have time off to enjoy family and rest from one’s labors.

Let Your Faith Inform Your Actions This Thanksgiving

I wish the retail community would not try so hard to co opt Thanksgiving by making it the official start of the Christmas shopping season. In doing so
our time for rest and refreshment is filled with a hurriedness to get the great deals wherever we like to shop.

But we don’t have to give in and rush around to shop deals, we can choose to spend time relaxing and doing things that we enjoy doing.

Thanks Living – It Is Something We Do

The Apostle Paul wrote long ago – “Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18 NLT).

This is a little bit different from what we normally think about during the Thanksgiving season. In fact it is a call to a higher standard. To be thankful in all circumstances calls us to live thankful even during the bad times in life.

In Everything Give Thanks—A Higher Standard

That’s hard to swallow, but I believe it is there first as a calling to live by different standards of the world and secondly a way that we can be light to the world around us.

First, The New standard – Christians are grateful, thankful in all situations. This may seem hard to do but it is a call to live thankful lives.

It’s is first thankful for knowing that our sins our forgiven and that we have a savior that is with us through thick and thin.

I find thanks even in the hard times; thanks because whatever happened could have been worse; because whatever happened, I am not alone in this; I can find solace in my savior.

Living thankful is a way of life, it is not easy, but with practice it becomes more and more something that we do because of who we are, or better put “whose we are”.

Thankful Living Is Light To a Needy World

This higher standard is not to set us up as great beings but it is to be light to a dying world. We are all called to be light to the world around us.

When we live lives that focus on thanks we do appear to some as strange, but we also motivate others. They see that our thankful living is less stressful on our own lives.

While I was writing this article someone forwarded me a great devotional called “Finding Gratitude” by Johann Christoph Arnold. You’ll can read the whole article at https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/holidays/thanksgiving/finding-gratitude.

There are several great quotes in this article but the one that I felt illustrated what Christian living should look like was one from Henry Nouwen – “To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives – the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections – that requires hard spiritual work. Still we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to this moment.”

As always I hope that something I have written helps you to better understand faith and how it relates to our lives.

I welcome your questions and comments.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving and remember to give thanks always.

Ray