In the next few days Americans will celebrate the national holiday of Thanksgiving. I’ve got my turkey ordered and will pick it up on Tuesday to start brining and eventually smoking it. Yum! is not even close to the right word for that.
Coast to coast, people are rehearsing their list of things they are thankful for. That sounds like a good thing, right?
I wonder if it isn’t a mediocre thing masquerading as a good thing.
Yes, it’s “nice” to be thankful for things. But isn’t that really an expression of self-indulgence. “Hooray for me! I’ve got all these nice things!!!”
I would suggest that being “thankful for” shortcuts God’s design for thanksgiving.
Today at church we touched on Luke 17:12-18. It’s the story of Jesus cleansing the 10 lepers. 10 lives changed from desperation and despair to hope and a future. But only one came back and worshipped Jesus.
Could we say that the other 9 were “thankful for” healing? Yes. I think that’s an easy reach. But they were thankful as they went, privately, rushing to collect their benefit.
One came back and expressed his “thanks to” the One that make his healing possible. He came back to Jesus and gave thanks to the Great Physician who changed his life.
Whose thanks was more appropriate? The ones who where “thankful for”? Or the one who was “thankful to”?
It’s easy to say “I’m thankful for health, freedom, family, a job….” you name it. It costs nothing. It makes you dependent on no one.
It’s completely different to say “I’m thankful to Jesus for His grace in my life, which looks like health, freedom, family, a job…” That puts you in a subordinate, submissive position.
The universe does not give good gifts that simply appear in our lives. Where we are not beholden to the giver.
James 1:17 says “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights…” So if we are thankful, it’s not an anonymous thing. We are thankful TO God.
So let me challenge you this Thanksgiving to monitor your words. Instead of saying “I’m thankful for”, say “I’m thankful to” – name who and then say want for.
The giver of good gifts is jealous of His glory. He desires us to express the fullness of His worth, not shrug it off or treat it like the anonymous universe…
Let me start. I am thankful to Jesus for loving me when I was completely unlovable and rebellious and giving me a family and a home. And I’m also thankful to you for reading about Jesus in the books that I have written.
May you have a blessed Thanksgiving in 2022.
Dennis
