In
my last post, I said that I would begin the first points of the “Real Man” and “Real
Woman” lists from The Rebelution.
However, I didn’t realize at the time that my next post would fall just
before Thanksgiving! Being that
Thanksgiving is an important topic (let alone holiday), I will save my intended
post for next week. You can find the
links to the “Real Man” and “Real Woman” pages at the bottom of my last
post. (I may also be putting both of those
in the “Some Awesome Links!” page of the blog.)
This past Sunday, my pastor spoke
on Thanksgiving (as would be typical for the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I
suppose.) He chose however to not speak
about the holiday, but instead simply
about the word: Thanksgiving. We can many times get caught up in the
celebration of a day instead of actually celebrating it for the reason it was
meant to be celebrated. Sometimes
though, having a day given to a certain celebration can cause us to not celebrate
it the other 364 days of the year. Think
about Christmas. It’s a wonderful time
to celebrate the birth of Christ, but if you were to have “Joy to the World”
playing in your car in the middle of May, people might think you’re a tad
crazy. In fact, it almost seems wrong to celebrate the birth of Christ
outside of the winter season. This can
sometimes be the case for Thanksgiving, sadly.
We spend the day being thankful for what we have and forget to thank God
all the other times he blesses us. (It
doesn’t help that the day after Thanksgiving we spend fighting each other to
get more stuff.) If someone were to give you a gift every
week, would you simply thank them once a year?
Of course not! We would be
thankful each time. The same is true
with God, except he doesn’t just bless us each week; He blesses us every single
day!
Sometimes, though, the way we thank
God on Thanksgiving can sometimes be selfish in its own way. One point that my pastor made in his message
was, “Sometimes we allow ‘counting our blessings’ to dissolve into ‘counting on our blessings’.” When I thank God for His blessings, I have to
watch out for how I do so. If I only
thank Him for my belongings, it can evolve into unintentionally thanking Him
for blessing me with more than someone else, thus comparing myself to others. This isn’t the way God intended us to thank
Him. It’s perfectly fine to thank God
for what we have, but He’s given us so much more than material things. He’s given us family, friends, and even subtle
blessings in our everyday life. These
are the things for which I am most thankful.
What are you most thankful for? A job?
A friend? A recent blessing? Share a comment below: