Thanksgiving/gratitude

Now that we have all celebrated Thanksgiving last week, enjoyed meals, and have come together with family and friends, has the real meaning of thanksgiving hit home with true gratitude from the heart? It’s easy to be thankful when you have family, friends, health, provisions, etc. But what if all you have is life and at best even that is in peril as it is for many people in this world? What if you are having trouble making ends meet, health issues, family problems, etc.? There are millions of people who raise the question, “How can I be thankful?” If we look at the world, it isn’t a very encouraging view. War and violence ruin the lives of many people. Poverty, starvation, disease, illiteracy, and social evils plague mankind. If you look at the world with that kind of negative view for any length of time, you would find it hard to have true gratitude.

When we are going through these hard times, our Father in Heaven wants us to turn to Him, to spend time in his Word, the Holy Bible. He wants us to know that “it is He who made us” and we are to “give thanks to him and praise his name.” (Psalm 100:3c & 4)

How many of us have Bibles that just lay on a shelf, in a heap of dust? Never picking them up and reading the treasures that can be found between the pages? It is like living at the base of a beautiful mountain, yet not seeing beyond the foothills that we live in. That is what so many of us do though. We see the poverty, sorrow, and trouble all around us, but we fail to “look up” and see the beauty that God wants to show us “between the pages .” When we start spending time is God’s Word, then we will find many reasons to be thankful.

Ephesians 5:20 tells us, “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And so, there you have it, when the going gets tough, only the life that is established on this biblical concept can face it triumphantly!

As we have now entered the season of Advent, remember to be thankful with true gratitude from the depths of your hearts, and let us all spend more time in God’s Word than we have this past year. May God bless richly each one who puts this all into practice.

Pastor John and Paula Powell

New Beginnings Fellowship

Church of the Nazarene