Thanksgiving! Who Exactly Are We Thanking?

Ungrateful people are often also unpleasant people.  Have you ever noticed this?

On the other hand, people who are thankful and appreciative seem to be happier, kinder, and thus more pleasant to be around.  Why?

I suppose it’s because appreciative people realize that, in the end, life is really a gift.  For, there is no guarantee as to our life’s longevity or even its quality.  As much as we try, we are not the absolute masters of our lives.  Things happen and we fall victim to… whatever, things beyond our control, which is to say that we owe someone more powerful than ourselves a hardy “Thank you” when life is good—that unexpected goodness that comes by surprise and truly beyond our ability to have made happen on our own.

Saying “thanks” is simply acknowledging that we owe a debt of gratitude.  We are in debt to an act of kindness, a generous gift, provisions supplied that could not have come of our own doing and were perhaps even underserved.  And for this we are grateful.

At the heart of gratitude is the recognition of a kind of dependency or needfulness.  For example, we need someone’s help or require the service of another; we have support, receive an act of kindness, a generous gift that made our life better, easier, or enabled us to move up and forward to better things.  We need the presence of others in our life, and most certainly the love of and acceptance of others.  We can’t do everything alone.  There are certain things that we can only get by the aid of another.  And so, we are grateful for their presence in our lives.

There are the proud and arrogant; the totally self-sufficient types who refuse to recognize their neediness of others.  For them it is a weakness ever to admit such a thing.  It’s almost as if they’d rather die than to call for help and admit, “I need you.  And I am much obliged, grateful for your kind help.”  But most of us realize that such an attitude is nothing more than hard-headed foolishness.

And so there is no shame in giving rightful thanks to God.

Oh Yes.  I know.  There are a lot of bad things going on in this world and some are hard pressed to find anything, ANY thing to be thankful about.  So why thank God?

Because, the bad things that happen in life actually serve to accentuate a deeper reality concerning our human condition: we are vulnerable, needful, dependent creatures.  We need God.  And, as such, we need to trust God and be grateful.  We owe God our gratitude.

The alternative is bleak: without God we are essentially on our own.  Without God, gratitude is nonsense.  To whom would we be giving thanks for what we have, who we are, the life we live—the universe, the sun, the stars, Mother Nature, Cosmic Dust, Ourselves?  Inanimate objects, the sun moon stars, etc., wouldn't give a twit about our gratitude.  So what about ourselves, what would we be thanking ourselves for?  “Cheers!  We’ve given ourselves Life!  Look what we’ve accomplished.  We did it!  We’ve made it!  By our strength and our wits we live.  We will conquer the universe.”  I think not.  That kind of strident arrogance is what gets us into trouble.  It was the arrogance of the Nazi’s in WWII and that of every other ugly oppressive empire in human history, past or present.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness nor shifting shadows,” says St. James (James 1:17).

This Thanksgiving Season, if you are thankful for friends and family and appreciate all you have.  Don’t forget to also turn your heart toward God.  God is gracious.  God is good.  By God’s mercy and by God’s grace are we given life, ability, and love.

Psalm 106:1-5
“Praise the Lord.  Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.  Who can proclaim the mighty acts of the Lord or fully declare his praise?  Blessed are they who maintain justice, who constantly do what is right.  Remember me, O Lord, when you show favor to your people, come to my aid when you save them, that I may enjoy the prosperity of your chosen ones, that I may share in the joy of your nation and join your inheritance in giving praise.”