Not Meant for the Rearview
Well, we have made it through another Thanksgiving holiday season. The turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and all the casseroles are behind us. Black Friday has come and gone. The Iron Bowl has been played. Now to work off all the junk we have eaten and shake off the laziness that comes with the long holiday. Thanksgiving is finally in the rearview.
Let me encourage you, however, to not let Giving Thanks be in your review. We hear the term thanksgiving so much during November that it’s easy for it to become a title rather than an action. The day called Thanksgiving is passed, but the idea of thanksgiving never should be. I have just as much to be thankful for in March as I do in November, I just don’t always allow myself to stop and show gratitude.
You might remember the song “Count Your Blessings.” It begins with the words: “When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed. When you are discouraged thinking all is lost….” Those words don’t leave you with a positive feeling. They sound downright depressing. Yet the next line is “Count your many blessings name them one by one and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”
When we feel bad and we feel discouraged it seems like the world is spiraling and nothing good has ever happened. David lamented in Psalm 51:5 is a controversial verse but it seems to simply be David’s lament similar to how we might say, “I’ve never done anything right in my life.” Other’s might conclude, “nothing good has ever happened to me” or “I never catch a break.”
The truth is, if we stop and “count our blessings” in those moments we may find that we have caught more breaks and had good things happen to us than our brains were allowing us to see in the moment. I’m still standing. I’m still fighting. I still have many around me that love me. I have a Lord that died with me on His mind. All of those speak to the truth that we have something for which to be thankful.
So, thanksgiving as an idea is not meant for the rearview. It is needed every day…and it might just be most necessary during the hard times. Some of Paul’s most poignant mentions of gratitude were while he was sitting in prison for preaching about the Man who saved the world (Ephesians 5:18-20; Philippians 1:3-5; 4:4-7; Colossians 1:3; 3:16-17; 4:2 to name a few). Gratitude is almost never the result of our circumstance, but the condition of our heart. It’s not meant for the rearview because it should never be a thing of our past. The holiday has come and gone. The need to be thankful has not.
Ben