I have a hard time understanding why we have only one day of Thanksgiving in America! God has blessed us beyond measure, and it seems that every day is a day to celebrate brothers or brothers-in-laws, sisters or sisters-in-law, mothers or mothers-in-law, even cousins. It is often dog and/or cat appreciation day. BUT, we set aside only one day for Thanksgiving because we have the other 364 days filled with complaints!
I have spent some time in looking at what I believe to be MAXIMS – things that are true by their very nature that apply to Thanksgiving for me.
To live in fear is to live in the shadow of death! Faith should overshadow all fear. Our fears are either grounded or groundless. Such fear results from insecurity and the lack of feeling loved. Love casts out all fear! We know how precarious life is. We feel the threat both of personal calamity, weather related difficulties, and political catastrophe. Yet even in these we can trust God. If God is for us, who can be against us that matters?
The length of God’s love outlasts the stubbornness of our sinfulness! None of us are qualified to cast stones! We are never fully awake to reality until we wake up to self-centeredness and determine to fight it. The more we know both the reality of who we truly are, the more we are overwhelmed by the depth and stubbornness of our sins. Then we long to be rid of our load, to be free from the burden of sin.
The strength of His purpose is more durable than the straying of our aimlessness! How little time and energy, let alone wisdom, we give deliberately to pursue the pathway of right and good and purpose. Even our efforts to promote the common good are exceedingly scattered. How much time do we spend as communities to discover and do the purpose of God? The planner and executor of most of our lives and of history as a whole is not we, but God. His great plan holds our lives together and directs the nations more deeply than conscious intentions.
The rest in God’s peace is more real than the restlessness of our conflicts! How weary of wearing tensions at work, among friends when we are supposed to have fun, perhaps even at home. Without conflict and tensions there can be no growth either in persons or in community. We have not been promised to be delivered from conflict, but promised that in conflict we can find great victory by giving in to God’s master plan. This is real victory, even our faith in Christ.
The height of His hope erases the depths of our hopelessness! We love in the age largely benefit of hope. Gone is the old optimism in favor of new despairs. Contrast such feelings with those of our youth; a sure hope; a believing that we could accomplish anything. Without hope, we have the right to despair, but when we stand on God’s promises, we have a new day and new horizons.
The surety of God’s promises is safer than the struggle of our doubts! Doubts are good when they serve growth; doubts are bad when they result from wrong. Spiritual doubts are more damming than intellectual doubts. Intellectual doubts must be honored. The doubts that are smoke screens, attempting to shut God out of our lives, must be destroyed. Our age is at least beginning to doubt its own doubts. It sees its own false certainties for what they truly are – our idols that stand in importance.
The freedom of serving others is more liberating than the fancy of our willfulness! Those who have found victory in life know the will of God, for it is freeing. Passivity gives power. To be free is to effect God purpose and plan for us and to express our whole nature. Freedom comes with fulfillment of self within the plan creation has for us. True liberty is the one with which Christ brings. Seeking freedom from self, we become servants; becoming servants enables us to find true freedom.
The certainty of his health is more healing than the coddling of our sorrow! Coddling our sorrows increases our illness; the immortal medicine of love heals them. Even when there is no help from illness, either from the doctor or from prayer, there is available a new heart of faith to bear up under it and to know that entrance into eternal life destroys all harm. Victorious faith should know the strain of victory.
The Light of Life everlasting refutes the lie of our demise! Our faith take death with complete seriousness. We are not by nature immortal, but headed for death. Nevertheless, when we know the God of Scripture, we know that He calls us back to life again! We know that for those who believe in Jesus Resurrection, there is resurrection, and that death bring birth!
Thanksgiving should be the time we take a fresh look at the blessings of God upon us personally and us as a nation. We should take time to think of His goodness and express appreciation in an appropriate way! HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
