Oh, Happy Day

Maybe I have too much time to think, but the significance of this holiday is really eating at me.  You know, as well as I, that this time of year has become closely associated with family get-togethers, over-eating, football games, and shopping.  In my heart, it just feels like there should be more to it than this.

You see, the most integral part of this holiday is something called ‘Thankfulness’.  Being “thankful” is a multi-party interaction.  You can be glad you have a job, without ever involving someone else, but if you are “thankful” for your job, then you are thankful to somebody (most likely your employer).  You can be glad you have health, but if you want to be thankful for your health, then you are thankful to someone (let’s say your doctor).  At its very heart, Thanksgiving is a day set aside for us to be thankful to someone for what we have, be it job, health, family, possessions, or whatever.

The question naturally follows, “Who should we be thankful to?”

In my opinion, it’s useless to be grateful to your employer for your job.  Unless you’re self-employed, your upper management would probably drop you like a rabid squirrel if the company got in a stiff enough financial bind.  Even if you are self-employed, it merely takes your customers deciding that they no longer need your services, and you’re in trouble.

What about health?  There’s only so much you can do to keep yourself healthy.  Walgreens would like you to think that hand sanitizer will solve your problems, but no matter how much you drink, you can still get sick.  The doctors you routinely see may or may not be able to figure out what your illness is, and even then, there are some things our physicians can’t heal.

The things we have, be it house, car, furniture, etc, are only one disaster away from being gone.  And even more than that, our precious families are just as fragile as our possessions.

If this day, set aside by our government, is to be a day of thanks, then let it be to the One who gives us the health, knowledge, ability, and in some cases sanity to perform our job.  Let it be to the One who guards us and those we love as we go about our days.  It can best be summed up in the words of James:

James 1:16-18 (New Living Translation)

 ¹⁶ So don’t be misled, my dear brothers and sisters. ¹⁷ Whatever is good and perfect comes down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. ¹⁸ He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his prized possession.

It’s amazing how we become so entitled about our lives.  Most of us walk around every day, never giving a second thought to what we’re doing, but take a person who’s been paralyzed in a car accident, and they would give almost anything to stand and move on their own again.  We take our children for granted, yet if we had one taken away from us, we’d never cease to be thankful for the ones we still have.

The biggest trick to this whole holiday is finding a way to express true thankfulness while we still have these good things we’ve been given.  I think if we got to a place where we honestly believed that everything we have is a gift from God and could be taken away at any moment, then we would be thankful as we should be.

I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, and hope that you will be able to reach that point where you can whole-heartedly express gratefulness to God for all He’s given you and continues to give to you.