Thanksgiving Day is a great holiday and four-day weekend helps. This year my family gets something new as our oldest, Dominique, comes home from college for the first time, just as everyone tries to journey home…to be with those they love. Thanksgiving Day is filled with parades, football, family traditions, memories, and great food. Above all else…and even if none of these other things existed in our lives, Thanksgiving is a time that provides the opportunity for us to be, yes, thankful…to lift ourselves and others out of the dark dungeon of ungratefulness.
We live in an age of entitlement…so it’s often difficult to be thankful when we feel “entitled” to most things. We focus on what we want and don’t have vs. all the blessings we do have and should be so thankful for. We need to work hard to counteract the glut of propaganda proclaiming the mantra, “We deserve more.”
Every Christmas commercial, ad, self-help book, well-meaning friend, and small voice from your flesh will scream to you that you deserve everything that is good or valuable. Really, we are all sinners and, news flash, the wages for sin is death. Everything we have is a tremendous gift of powerful grace that is granted to us by the one we offend, disappoint, reject, deny, and grieve…very regularly.
I hate to be a holiday downer, but you see, unless you know what you really and truly deserve, it is impossible to see how many gifts and how much unbelievable grace you actually have everyday.
Today, when you aren’t full of thanks, ask God to open your eyes and release you from the dark dungeon of ungratefulness. Before you eat, go around the table, holding hands, and tell each other what you are thankful for. Remember, the secret of being thankful is learning to see everything from God’s perspective. Then you will truly thank Him for loving, pursuing, and giving you so much.
The staff at Lighthouse Network wishes the Stepping Stones community a blessed Thanksgiving Day and future.
Prayer
Dear Father God, I come to You, Father, in prayer. I ask, Father, that You set me free from the prison of ingratitude. Release me, Lord, to enjoy the pleasures of having a thankful heart. It’s easy for me, Father, to be grateful when I wake up on the right side of the bed and encounter no major problems. At other times, thankfulness feels totally unreachable. I need a perspective-lift Father; help me see things from Your viewpoint. I pray in the name of the one who is the source and reason for my thankfulness, Jesus Christ; and all God’s children said - AMEN!
The Truth
To open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house.
Isaiah 42:7
In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Thessalonians 5:18
