A New look at "Giving Thanks"

Scripture Reference: “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good and His Love endures forever! Psalm 136:1 (NLT)

As I headed to work the other day, I noticed a city crew installing Christmas lights in the trees around a shopping strip.  The day prior I had gone into a store to look at an item and they were moving their Halloween items to a new area.  One other shopper commented to the store employee about the store making more room for more Halloween items to be brought out.  But the response from the store employee was shocking, “No, we have to make room for the Christmas items so we can put them out this afternoon.”  This on October 6^th.  Is it just me or did we forget something?

Look at the order of procession here.  First the devil has “his day”.  Then we want to skip right over to the “getting presents” of Christmas and we forgot a number of items here.  We as sinful humans follow this pattern quite often.  This is how we run our Spiritual lives also.  We have our “day of evil”, or our sin, and then we go right to wanting a gift from the LORD.  Do you see how the natural and the Spiritual run parallel? 

Stay with me here.  Allow me to point out another item, which we do both naturally and spiritually.  We skip over Thanksgiving.  The Bible is clear and teaches us over and over again, to “Give thanks unto the LORD, for He is good and His Love endures forever!”  But yet we minimize the time we spend being “Thankful” (as in our one day out of the year where we step back to “Give Thanks”) and want to rush right to getting our presents or what we can get from God; depending if we are speaking of the natural or the Spiritual.  We have all said it, even during Thanksgiving Day, “I can’t wait until Christmas gets here.”  We forget our sin, our day, or days of evil against Him, and we look for a hand-out or blessing from the LORD. 

I am going to leave it to you to “evaluate your own life, properly”.  No one can rightly judge another for the bible is clear, “man looks on the outside, but God looks at the heart (of a man)” 2 Samuel 16:7.  My prayer is with careful consideration, earnest prayer on our part, and a diligent seeking of the LORD’s face, not His hand (presents), we will become more in-tune with the heart of God.  This year let’s approach this “holiday season” with a grateful heart, giving thanks unto the LORD for He is good and His Love endures forever.  Allow Him to show us our weakness and sin, and teach us to be more dependent upon Him for His LOVE.  After all His love is the Greatest Gift He gave and continues to give us each and every day!