"Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice! Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4: 4-7)
"It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praise to your name, Most High. To proclaim your love in the morning, your faithfulness in the night, With a ten-stringed harp, with melody upon the lyre. For you make me jubilant, Lord, by your deeds; at the works of your hands I shout for joy." (Psalm 92: 2-4)
We are coming up on that one day of the year where we get together with friends and family to load ourselves full of turkey while we watch the Detroit Lions typically lose on national television. Thanksgiving!
But Turkey Day, as some call it, is more than just, well, turkey. It is also more than plotting out your Black Friday plan of attack. It is more than watching the Macy's parade and pulling the wishbone. It is, of course, about giving thanks.
It is the one day where schools and business are closed and the Government is shut down just so we can reflect on the many blessing in our lives and be thankful. This notion of gratitude, however, didn't start with Pilgrims and Indians.
The scriptural passages above are just a few of the many examples in the Bible where we are reminded of the need to give thanks to God. Furthermore, every time we celebrate mass the priest says, "Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God" and then the congregation responds, "It is right to give Him thanks and praise."
However, the sad reality is I think we all have some major room for improvement in this area. We often dwell on what is going wrong in our lives and first take that to prayer. We tend to take all sorts of things, big and small, for granted. We fail to realize that even through the hardships we endure that God is working miracles and bestowing grace upon grace on us.
I once received an email that talked about someone who had died and entered into heaven. This soul was getting the grand tour by one of God's angels. The angel took him to huge room packed full of other angels who answered phones and frantically wrote down notes. It was explained to the man that this is where prayer request come in to. Typically the nature of these prayers ranged from request for improved health, success with a job interview, help with broken relationships, and other desperate pleas for divine intervention. The man was then shown a much smaller room where just two angels sat in silence waiting for the phones to ring. The man asked what this room was all about and the angel explained that this is where the prayers of thanksgiving come to.
When I first became involved with youth ministry, we would have the teenagers write down on a weekly basis things they were thankful for. Sometimes they would write down just one thing while other times they would list two dozen different things. What they were thankful for ranged from the big things (family & friends, their faith, God's forgiveness, their senses, the Sacraments, free will), to the practical things (clean drinking water, a warm home, clothes to wear) to seemingly small things (strawberry ice cream, a new video game, an extension on an English paper). There were no right or wrong answers. The point of the exercise was to just get the teenagers to recognize all the wonderful blessing that have been given to them.
In this week leading up to Thanksgiving Day, I challenge you to do the same. You can make a long list of things or just keep a post-it by your computer and add one thing every day. See how many you can come up. Perhaps you will give start to forget about the things you don't have and will find yourself being grateful for things you never appreciated before. We become happier people when we are mindful of all we have been given. Again, there are no write or wrong answers, just be truly appreciative of it. Furthermore, feel free to post a comment to this blog post with just one thing you are thankful for. Lets see how many things we can come up with.
In closing, I just want to THANK you for reading this and for just being you. I pray that you have a great Thanksgiving Day and many amazing days of giving thanks year round.
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