O come; let us sing for joy to the Lord; Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with Psalms. Psalms 95: 1,2 (New American Standard Bible)
My three-year-old granddaughter, Elizabeth, was recently in my office checking out a calendar which was turned to the month of November. She pointed to the last Thursday and asked why the number was in red. “That means that day is Thanksgiving. Do you know what Thanksgiving Day means?” Without a beat she threw her arms up and said, “We eat turkey!”
I believe that is one of the many things we have to be thankful for. In America we are surely blessed even with all the evil that is apparent within our society. I was sitting on my front porch a couple of days ago and was thankful for the peace and relative safety of not having to worry about having a mortar round dropped on my house or being shot at or kidnapped by thugs or martyred for my faith in Christ. Then I thought of the smaller of blessing like being able to draw my next breath. That set me to thinking of the little capillaries of thanksgiving that I tend to take for granted like my sight, my hearing and even my sense of touch.
Even with all our woes we are still the recipients of great blessing in so many ways. Looking over the rough spots of life and at the positive aspects of what we have can bring us to be in awe of what God has given us. When we stop to consider what we do have there’s a whole boatload of things, both physical and spiritual, for which we can raise our voices of Thanks. Thanks be to God who gives us bread instead of stone and fish instead of scorpions and serpents. Giving thanks to Him for the many large and small blessings we experience every day can be so easy-as easy as our next breath.
Thank you Jesus for the many things you do for me and for the blessings you bestow both in my physical world and what You have done and continue to do for me in spiritual places. You hold all things together and all I am is only because of your grace.
Ken
