Yes, it’s Thanksgiving. In addition to turkey, stuffing, football, and friends it is a time to count our blessings and to be thankful for all the things that God has given us.
However, when the turkey is cold the friends are gone, your belt is let out a notch or two more and the black Friday bills come due how grateful, how appreciative, and how thankful are we?
Dr. Robert Emmons is the world’s leading scientific expert about the subject of gratitude. A professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Emmons writes that We live in a nation where everyone is on their own pursuit of happiness. Everyone has his or her own path on this journey. For some, the search begins in books; for others it comes through service.
But perhaps the most popular form of seeking happiness is through the accumulation of “things.” Dr. Emmons has concluded that materialism rules the day.
A society such as ours that feels entitled to what it receives does not adequately express gratitude. Seen through the lens of buying and selling, relationships as well as things are viewed as disposable, and gratitude cannot survive this materialistic onslaught. The lack of gratitude the lack of being thankful is contagious and is passed from one generation to the next.
That is why it’s so easy to be thankful for a few hours on Thanksgiving Day and so unthankful for the rest of the year. Because before the dinner is put away, we go back to our old ways of materialism and individual happiness justified by our “rights” as an American to freedom at all costs.
This lack of gratefulness this feeling that we cannot be thankful is nothing new. Jesus in Luke 17:11-18 heals 10 men suffering from leprosy however only one of the men came back to thank Jesus.
So, this is the point in ways big and small God is helping us keeping us safe from hurt harm and danger. God is helping us sending people into our lives to give us comfort, guidance, and love. God is helping us God is helping us, God is helping us.
So, this is the other point it’s easy to be thankful on Thanksgiving the day, the time, place, and day where being thankful is expected.
So, my final point is this God wants us to be thankful not just on Thanksgiving Day but always. In the versus from Luke Jesus indicates that being thankful brings glory to God. So, say thank you to the person who hands you food at the fast-food place. Say thank you the people who deliver the mail, say thank you to the garbage man, the newspaper man, the woman who does your hair, the woman who cleans up your room at the hotel and the young man who cuts your grass. Let us be thankful for everything and everybody and while we are saying thanks let us not forget to say thank you to God.
Pray with me please: Our Father who is in heaven we thank you for harvest that is on our table and family that has gathered around it. We ask your traveling mercies during this time as many have gone far and wide for gathering and reunions after so long of being apart. And while these joining acts take place, others are alone others are sick others are grieving. Father reach out to them using me and others as your instrument. Not only on this day, but the in the times and the monuments that our help is most needed. Spring into us the spirit of gratefulness displayed by the lepper who came back to thank Jesus, even as we live in a world where materialism is valued more that humbleness and where individualism has made us more focused on self instead of being grateful for others. May we live thankful lives in the image of your son Jesus whose name that we pray, let us all say. Amen, Ame
For More Great Content Go To Marben Bland.com
