For Giving Thanks

The Origin of Thanksgiving

In 1863, as the country was engulfed in the flames of Civil War, Abraham Lincoln called all Americans to observe, “a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” A century earlier, in 1789 after the birth of our nation, George Washington commended “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God.” Even a century before this, in 1621, after their first year in the New World, the Pilgrims shared a banquet with their Wampanoag neighbors without whom they would have perished. Before all this, it appears that the very first American Thanksgiving took place in 1620 on the creaking deck of the Mayflower. After 66 days of peril at sea, as Plymouth Rock came into view, the Pilgrims knelt together and sang the 100^th Psalm.

Of all 150 Psalms, why might they have chosen the Ol’ Hundredth? Perhaps, it was because this is the only psalm designated “a psalm for giving thanks.” Our God teaches us in the 100^th Psalm that the grounds of our gratitude is not circumstantial, but covenantal. Psalm 100 teaches us to give thanks in all things because we are twice God’s.   

         

Give Thanksgiving Because We Are God’s Loving Creation

Growing up, we spent every Thanksgiving in the home of my grandparents with the rest of my extended family. With the aroma of turkey, stuffing, cranberries, and sweet potatoes wafting from the kitchen, we played board games, football in the yard, and looked at old photos. Each year, as we crowded around the dining table, we each named something for which we were thankful.

If the psalmist had been seated at our table he would have given two answers. The first is God’s loving creation:

“Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us…” (Ps.100:3).

What would you point to if you were trying to explain God’s great power to a neighbor? Would it be the sky-scraping Himalayan Mountains or the swirling continental hurricane? What about the luminous Milky Way? In Psalm 139:14, David pointed to the unborn child being knit together in its mother’s womb and said, “I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

The first funeral I ever preached was for a still-born child. The child was laid to rest in a shoebox-sized coffin. In the days preceding when I entered the hospital room, I found the mother cradling her 15-week-old stillborn baby against her heart. Though the soul of that little one had flown home to God we gazed in awe at the majesty of God’s creation. We counted his fingers and toes. We marveled at his tiny porcelain nose and ear buds. Through translucent skin we traced his veins and bones. And through tears we worshipped the God who made something so fearfully beautiful.

I’m not sure how you feel about your body. You might prefer it a bit taller, stronger, thinner and younger. But do you recognize the power of God on display in you?

God etched your fingerprint, customized the colors of your skin, eyes, and hair, and placed each freckle. He endowed you with unique gifts and abilities that you might be fitted for His service. He gives soundness of mind and strength of limb. He makes our hearts beat, lungs breath, and eyes blink. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). That ought to instill within us a sense of profound humility without which thanksgiving is impossible.

Charles Spurgeon, “Some men live as if they made themselves; they call themselves ‘self-made men,’ and they adore their supposed creators; but Christians recognize the origin of their being and their well-being, and take no honor to themselves either for being, or for being what they are.”

 

Give Thanksgiving Because We Are God’s Merciful Redemption

The second cause David offers to inspire thanksgiving is God’s merciful redemption,

“We are his people, the sheep of his pasture” (Psalm 100:3).

David reveled in the thought of belonging to God’s steadfast love. This is the pinnacle of our praise. It is the mystery of salvation into which the angels long to look. When we join our voices with the cloud of witnesses and myriads of cherubim and seraphim around the throne, there may be notes accessible only to the blood-bought children of Zion. Melodies reserved only for the recipients of mercy who can sing it because they’ve tasted it: “For why the Lord our God is good, His mercy is forever sure!”

Rick Phillips tells the story of a little boy who spent his summer mowing lawns to save up enough money to order a model boat kit. Once the kit arrived, he began constructing it in his father’s workshop. This wasn’t a little dingy but rather a grand galleon. It took him a whole year to glue every deck board, hang every sail, tie every line. When it was finally finished, the boy took it the stream near his house for the maiden voyage. But sadly, a gust of wind blew the boat away and it was lost.

The boy was heartbroken until months later he saw his boat in the window of a pawn shop. He pleaded with the owner to give it back to him, who only said, “Sorry kid. I paid good money for that boat. If you want it, you’ll have to pay for it.” The boy returned to mowing laws. Months later, he stepped into the store and put his money on the counter and walked out with his boat. He looked down at the boat, cradled in his arms and said, “You are now twice mine! For I made you and I bought you.”

Christians are twice God’s! He made you and he bought you by the blood of his Son on Calvary’s cross. The joy that flows from these twin truths runs deep in the soul like an oceanic current that is untouched by conditions on the surface. We can “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).