After Thanksgiving, What?

Thanksgiving Day is over. Now what? Surely days of giving thanks are not over. This is no time to return to ingratitude.

We have survived a brutal election season in a divided country. We need healing. We need to give thanks for the things that unite us. Our broken world is filled with anger, distrust, and war. Thank the Lord we have survived all this and more.

Have thoughts of entitlement or familiarity or indifference crept in to diminish or color your gratitude? If so, you are being myopic in your thoughts regarding the many blessings you are receiving. Overcoming this and renewing an attitude of thanksgiving is found in two uplift ways.

The panacea is found in two of the most meaningful words you can speak. They are “Thank you.” Simple isn’t it?

We owe the Pilgrims gratitude for identifying the appropriate object of our thanks. Our object as was theirs should be to our benevolent God. Yes, God. Candidly, when was the last time you expressed to Him those two words: “Thank you.” Get up to date and pause now to do so.

Maybe you don’t feel thankful. Feeling thankful is an act of emotions. Giving thanks is an act of the will.

Surrounded by death and grief the Pilgrims likely did not feel very thankful. However, they had hearts of thanks and gave thanks in spite of any negative feelings.

Perhaps you presently don’t feel very thankful. Try these reasons for expressing thanks.

“Be thankful you can open your eyes wide.
Be thankful for what you see outside.
Be thankful for green grass and blue sky.
Be thankful for all those passing by.
Be thankful for this country so free
Where each can express opinions peacefully.
Be thankful on this and every day.
Repay these gifts in your special way.” Gregory Huyette

It has been said gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

An inventory of things for which you feel it unreasonable to be thankful is easy to make. Surprise, everybody has such a list. Everybody? Everybody, even the person you know with the cheeriest disposition? Everybody.

I have known a lot of “old saints” through the years. Their youthful and even golden years have passed them. Daily pain is an uninvited guest in their body. Sadness is strewn across their life’s past. Among them there have been many who simply chose to be thankful and to express it.

In another city I recently visited a friend who was once a vibrant athlete, a scholar, and high school principal. His eyes were deeply sunken, his complexion a sick yellow, and his body frail. Cancer was his bodily antagonist. Faint though it was, there was a smile on his purple lips and a faint voice expressive of thanksgiving. Why? Because long ago he found the source deserving of thanks of which adversity could not rob him. Here we are back to the Pilgrims. He, like they, had identified the source worthy of thanks.

Albert Schweitzer noted “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” If there is such a person in your life, pause now for such a person and let that flame blaze by thanking the Lord for that person and all of His blessings upon you.

God is giving you the gift of 86,400 seconds today. When it is over how many will  you have spent thanking Him?