Happy Thanksgiving!

The holiday season is fast approaching. Pastors have (and will) no doubt encourage their congregations to express their gratitude to the Lord, to stop and consider all they have for which to be thankful.

I don’t want take this opportunity to expound on some deep theological thought for an extended amount of time (which will surprise my congregation and those who have read this blog in the past). Instead, I wish to make a suggestion.

I post this entry on Monday, November 21st. This means there are 34 days until Christmas, when we take time to celebrate the birth of Jesus. It is important that we be thankful at Thanksgiving, and at Christmas, too; but I believe that this thankfulness becomes generic, losing much of its impact, and making us less grateful than we could be.

Therefore, I suggest that, starting today, or whenever you read this blog entry, you make a list of 34 specific things you are thankful for, blessings God has given you, times He has seen you through. Write them down, and then each day until Christmas, thank the Lord for one thing on your list. Good times to do this would be when you first wake up, when you have lunch, and when you go to bed. This way, the beginning, middle, and end of each day is spent thanking Jesus for what He’s done for you.

By making the conscious effort to thank the Lord, and by making a tangible list of blessings, your experience with the Lord becomes very personal and very real. I believe we are all, to some degree, guilty of generalizing our spiritual life, of simply saying, “Thanks for what You’ve given me. Keep giving me what I need. Amen.” Now is the time to stop and truly reflect on what it is God has really done for us, and how fortunate we really are.

Even in the darkest of times, the presence of the Lord not only offers a beacon of hope, but a blessed light to illuminate the grace He has given us, because sometimes the darkness has a way of hiding the marvelous grace God has promised us. May God give you a wonderful Thanksgiving season with family and friends, and may we all see that our heavenly Father is faithful in all things, and has given us a truly blessed life.


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