Thanksgiving Thoughts
Psalm 107:1-3
Well, Fall certainly took the scenic view to arrive this year, but Fall has officially arrived. In early October, I was still watching football games on Friday night in what felt like a convection oven. The last few Friday nights I have tossed away all shame and huddled under a blanket and worn a hoodie. I love Fall. So many things begin to change. The landscape changes and the cool mornings and evenings are tremendously rejuvenating. In addition to the changing weather, I also love the fact Thanksgiving is right around the corner. I love Thanksgiving. I don’t particularly love turkey, but when eaten with family at Thanksgiving the turkey always tastes better.
I could easily get on my soap box and talk about how culturally we have skipped over Thanksgiving and gone straight for the consumeristic celebration of secularized Christmas. I could easily make the case that we should boycott all stores who put out Christmas stuff in October (of course we would not be able to go anywhere). I could easily bemoan the reality of hearing Christmas music in November, and I could whine about all of the Christmas movies already flooding Netflix and my DVR que at home. Thankfully, I will not bore you with my soap box; anyway, where was I?
Thanksgiving is awesome! We have so much to be thankful for and yet we have perfected the art of being ungrateful. This month let’s start a habit of being grateful that will permeate our lives from here on out. To help us in this process we are going to look at Psalm 107. Each week we will work through more of the Psalm.
Take a few moments and read Psalm 107:1-3.
Have you taken some time lately to reflect on the ways God is good? Have you become so consumed with the problems of the world and the false reality portrayed in social media you skip over the good surrounding us? I encourage you to start being thankful for the small things that may seem insignificant; ice cream, left over Halloween candy, a cool breeze, a warm ray of sunshine, the smile of a friend, hearing a good song at just the right time, etc.
After getting warmed up in being thankful, start to think more broadly across your life. How has God been good to you? How has His love endured throughout the ups and downs of your life? This can be painful, because we naturally remember the difficult times of life and we typically don’t want to relive the pain and suffering associated with those points in our life. Sometimes the most amazing examples of God’s goodness are found when we look back openly and honestly at the storms of our life.
Being thankful and looking for how God was good through the storms of our life is a helpful way to find healing from the results of the storm. I have tried to be very intentional about doing this when I think about the storms of my life. I find being thankful helps to push out the bitterness, anger and hurt the storms of life typically bring. Now, rather than negative feelings overwhelming me when I think about past struggles, I am able to rejoice in God’s presence through the storms.
Psalm 107 begins by encouraging the people of God to tell their story of redemption, hope, and victory. As we enter into this season of Thanksgiving let us all remember our stories of God’s goodness and love.