Thanksgiving is here. I have seen some people through the month of November write something each day that they are thankful for, and I thought that was a pretty good thing to do, but I didn’t do it myself. However, I think it would be appropriate for me to share what I am thankful for.
I am thankful to God for the salvation he gave me through Jesus Christ and the peace I’ve received through the Holy Spirit. In Jesus Christ I not only find forgiveness, peace, meaning, and purpose, but also I have hope. I hope for and long for the day when God’s kingdom will come and his will is done on earth as it is in heaven. One of the things I have taught and preached about often is that things are not now the way they ought to be. I love doing that because then I don’t have to pretend that everything is ok. But there is more. I have within me a deep hope for the day when everything is the way it ought to be. I long for that time. I am thankful for that.
I am thankful for my family. My wife is a great partner and my best friend, and I continue to be deeply in love with her. I love being a dad. It’s crazy and hard sometimes, but it is also so much fun and such a humbling thing to be entrusted with something so important as raising a child. I am thankful for my parents and Anne’s parents. They are generous and wonderful grandparents for our children. I am thankful for our siblings and their spouses – and for our nieces and nephew. Being an uncle is so cool, and seeing a sibling with their child is a really neat thing.
I am thankful that I have a steady job, food to eat, a roof over my head, a place to sleep. I am thankful for our church family, for each kind word, gift, prayer, and act of support. There have been so many ways that they have reached out to us. I am thankful for the children’s ministry, the youth ministry, and the music ministry at the church. I am thankful for every person who does something to help us as a community to be the church spreading the gospel to the world.
It’s funny, but even as I type this I realize that I could go on and on. Just as I get going I realize that I have just scratched the surface in each of these areas. So, perhaps that is why Thanksgiving is an important holiday. It’s a good exercise to simply pause and consider what blessings you have received. I know that for myself, it becomes tempting to focus on what I do not have or what I have lost. When I focus on those things I then miss the things that I do have.
Accept, O Lord, my thanks and praise for all that you have done for us. I thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love.
I thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for the loving care that surrounds us on every side.
I thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.
Above all, I thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying, through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom.
Grant me the gift of your Spirit, that I may know Christ and make him known; and through him, at all times and in all places, may give thanks to you in all things. Amen.