In 2020, I wrote on Thanksgiving Day, “There’s no question that this has been a challenging year.” 2020 was tough. But, then, like every year, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s came around. I realized in a new and powerful way how helpful these days are to help us reset and find new hope and purpose for the year to come.
The first event of this triad is Thanksgiving. I will talk more about it in a moment, but note that this holiday helps us see the good without ignoring the bad. The second is Christmas. My sermon series in 2020 was “The Weary World Rejoices.” Christmas tells us that there is a source of joy that transcends our circumstances. The third event is New Year’s. The New Year gives us a fresh start. How good it was to get 2020 behind us and move into 2021
Since today is Thanksgiving, let me dwell on it a bit more. Our tendency as humans is to ruminate on the bad things we experience and quickly scroll past the good things. A hundred people could greet us with warmth, but if one person is mean to us, we focus on that encounter. We could enjoy a dozen good visits to a restaurant, but we remember the time when our order was wrong. Our minds cling to the bad but quickly pass over the good.
Thanksgiving balances our normally overcast brains with sun. Thanksgiving does not ignore the bad. It simply helps us see the good. It gives us an opportunity to take in deeply the good people we enjoy, the pleasant things we experience, and the useful things we accomplish.
Giving thanks also refers to giving thanks to people. We should give thanks to the people who have blessed us. There are innumerable people who enrich our lives. Have you thanked the today?
When we talk about giving thanks as Christians, we mean that we take in the good things around us. Then, we let those good things lift our hearts up to the Lord with a sense of gratitude to the One who has bestowed them upon us. That is how we engage in thanksgiving.
To give thanks takes time. It takes thought. We have to set aside time, like our nation has done, to take in all these good things. That is the true purpose of this day.
I encourage you to take some time today to meditate on the following and similar questions:
- Who have you enjoyed being with this year?
- What good things have you experienced this year, from meals to trips to fall leaves?
- What have you accomplished this year that was useful for yourself and others?
- What things have you learned this year that were helpful to you?
The value of thanksgiving is that it helps us see the good: in ourselves, in others, and in God. Instead of looking at the world merely as a place of failure, disappointment, and loneliness, Thanksgiving helps us see that it is also a place of accomplishment, satisfaction, and friends. This can give us a joy we would not experience otherwise.
Thanksgiving looks to the past and present, but it empowers us to strike out into the future. The future will contain challenges. Thanksgiving reminds us that it will also contain resources. The future will have griefs. Thanksgiving reminds us that it will also contain joys. The future will present us with losses of loved ones. Thanksgiving reminds us that the future will present us with new friends. Above all, Thanksgiving reminds us that the faithful God who has not failed to do us good in the past will not fail to continue to do us good in innumerable ways in the future.
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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash