Entering into Thanksgiving

When you think about it, Thanksgiving is the perfect forerunner to Advent and Christmas. Traditionally, in the USA, we celebrate Thanksgiving as a way of remembering the first bountiful harvest at the Plymouth settlement in Massachusetts, and the friendship that existed between these settlers and the Wampanoag Native American Indian tribe who had helped the settlers to survive by providing food and teaching them to cultivate the land and fish. 

The Pilgrims gave thanks for their survival and God’s providence. They knew all too well that their survival through a harsh winter and their ability to plant corn and fish was not due to their own strength, but because God had made a way for them to live and survive in this land.

As we enter into Thanksgiving today, many of us do not have a bountiful harvest to celebrate (unless you are a gardener, like me), and we are not really depending on God for our daily sustenance because even the grocery stores are open on Thursday. But all the same, we need to lift our hands in praise because our God has made a way for us to live and survive in this land. He has provided for our most basic physical needs as a way to provide for our spiritual needs. 

You see, God, our creator, sustainer, and enabler, loved His creation so much that he decided not to write us off as a failed experiment, but to redeem us. So He has made a way for us to live and survive, not so that we can continue to live half hearted spiritual lives, but so that we can have life fully and pour all our effort and strength into loving our Redeemer and Savior and loving each other.

Psalm 8:3-4 says, “When I consider the heaven, the work of your fingers, the moon and the starts, which you have set in place; what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” Of everything that God created; the complexities and mysteries of space, other planets, possibly other life forms, stars, moons, laws of physics, gravity, galaxies, and everything that is so much bigger and more complex than our human frames, God chose to crown us with honor and glory (Psalm 8:5). Rather than banish our little planet to the outreaches of space and let it freeze over and decay, God chose to renew it by sending his Son to earth to free it with His sacrifice. God paid our debt, and we can never repay Him.

So besides, the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, assortment of pies and other delights in which we will partake come Thursday, let us also partake in the knowledge that we are incredibly loved by God, redeemed by Him, and set apart to do His good works in this world. Let us lift our hands in thanks to the one who has chosen to allow us to participate in His creation and His redemption of it. Let us thank God that we can have that second piece of pie, while many of our brothers and sisters in Christ who live throughout the world do without such an extravagance. 

In our thankfulness, let us then turn our hearts towards the Advent season as we begin to await the coming of the Christ child, not just his first coming, but also his second coming in glory and splendor. We are thankful for God’s blessings, and let us seek to show others the same love and blessing which we have already received from the God who became Man and died for us. Amen and Amen.