THANKSGIVING

Five days from now most of us will sit down to a special Thanksgiving Day meal. The meal will, in most cases, involve turkey as the main meat dish. Pumpkin and/ or pecan pie will be found on most dessert tables on this special day.  Between the turkey and pie will be a wide variety of dressings, fresh and cooked vegetables, and potatoes both sweet and white.  Gathered around the table to share in this modern day feast will be family and close friends to help celebrate.  The regular television schedule will be interrupted to carry parades and football games. Tradition says this event harkens back to the Pilgrims day of thanksgiving celebrated with the native Americans who helped them survive after settling on this continent.

What in your life is cause for thanksgiving come Thursday?  Probably the same things that are in your life today for thanksgiving.  Every day should be one of thanksgiving to God.  Cruden's complete Concordance offers the following definition for thanksgiving: “An acknowledging and confessing with gladness, the benefits and mercies which God bestows either upon ourselves or others” (page 665).  The Scriptures are full of examples of God’s people expressing such thanksgiving.

In the Mosaic system the peace offering was sometimes offered as a thanksgiving offering.  Moses wrote, “And this is the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings, which he shall offer unto the LORD. If he offer it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer with the sacrifice of thanksgiving unleavened cakes mingled with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil, and cakes mingled with oil, of fine flour, fried. Besides the cakes, he shall offer for his offering leavened bread with the sacrifice of thanksgiving of his peace offerings” (Leviticus 7:11-13).

In Psalm 69:30,31 we find: “I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving.  This also shall please the LORD better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs.”  Hear the words of Psalm 100:

Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves;  we are  his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

Do you praise God and magnify Him with thanksgiving?  Do you enter with praise and thanksgiving?  Every child of God should, for He has given us the greatest of gifts, life through the death of His Son.  That alone is enough to make Him worthy of receiving praise, honor, glory, and thanksgiving from us every day for as long as the Lord allows us the health of mind and body.

As you pause on Thursday and celebrate a national day of Thanksgiving, to who and for what will you be thankful?

Denny—