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Time to Thank…uh…Someone
By Marc | November 19, 2007
Thanksgiving is coming in a few days and we’ll spend it the way many people in the United States do. We’ll go to a family member’s house and eat lots of food that includes at least turkey on the menu. After the gluttony, each person will say (a minimum of once), "I ate way too much." Children will run rampant. There will be a group of people huddled around the television to be hypnotized by whatever football game thing happens to be on. (I don’t watch football, so I don’t follow what big game it is that people just have to watch.) Room will be made in stomachs for various pies. Leftovers will be contained. People will go home.
With the exception of those four years in the Navy (and a few of the lean "college" years), my entire life has had this same routine on the same holiday that occurs on a Thursday in late November. And each year everyone hears the same thing: It’s a time to be thankful.
I’m not saying I’m not thankful or never have been. I have always been thankful for the people in my life, my possessions, my health, my job, so on and so forth. I think most people are. This isn’t even about that.
It’s just that we are bombarded with the message to be thankful, but we are never told where that thanks should be directed.
I am thankful to my parents for all the sacrifices they made, I’m thankful to my wife and kids for wanting to stick with me even when I don’t deserve it. I’m thankful to my employers for giving me a job and feeding my family. But it goes much deeper than this.
Who is responsible for all those gracious things? Who provides all? Who makes everything happen? Who pulls the strings? Who keeps your heart beating and your lungs moving? To whom should we be thankful?
Everyone knows about the story (or bastardized version) of the first Thanksgiving. The gist of it is the Pilgrims came to America on the Mayflower, had some bad times with starving and dying and stuff, made friends with the native peoples, and had a feast to celebrate the fact that things had gotten a little better.
We hear this story and don’t get too deep into it. I used to think they were called "The Pilgrims" as if it was just the name for their group, like a bunch of people who joined a club and wanted to go on a cruise. Sure, they are now known as the Pilgrims (capital "P"), but they were Puritans who came here from England to be free to worship God in their own way without the C of E. So when they had a feast to celebrate the good year they had, who did they thank?
They thanked God for everything, not just this one time. Throughout the bad times and during the good times, they thanked God. They came here as Christians to avoid religious persecution. They could have chosen to assimilate in England, but they chose God. They gave up everything and risked their lives based on what they believed, so of course they thanked God for every little thing.
The term "Turkey-day" is used a lot as a replacement for "Thanksgiving". Maybe it’s a comment on the tradition of everyone to stuff their faces with turkey and so that’s what it’s become. Maybe it’s a way to deemphasize the reason for a day such as it is. Thanksgiving as a holiday hasn’t existed the entire time since the seventeenth century, but the whole point of the day is to take time to think about what you are thankful for.
And if you think about it enough to break the shiny feel-good surface, you’ll have to come up with someone to be thankful to when you are coming up with things to be thankful for. Whether it’s your family, your friends, your boss, and especially God: be thankful every day.
And try to let them know it.
I thank my God every time I remember you. – Philippians 1:3
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