Scott Tibbs
The importance of thanksgiving
By Scott Tibbs, November 23, 2022
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and God's Word is
filled with commands to give thanks for what we have. Many of us will look at our blessings this week, only to promptly forget the lessons by Monday morning. But Thanksgiving should not be something we do only on the fourth Thursday of November. We are to be thankful for what we have all year long.
Thanksgiving protects our souls and helps keep us satisfied with what we have. The temptation to envy is greatly lessened, if not eliminated, by being thankful for what we have. Envy is cheek by jowl with bitterness, which serves as a merciless rot that harms us more than anyone else.
We can all look to things that we have in our lives. These include a loving spouse, our children, a good job, a nice home, good friends, a caring church, good health, loving parents and so forth. We live in a nation rich with opportunity where our fundamental liberties are, for the most part, protected by law. Not everyone is going to have the same blessings, and some will have more blessings than others, but all of us have blessings that we can took to and thank God that He gave them to us.
But more importantly than all of this for Christians is that we have a Savior who sacrificed His life as payment for our sins - sins that we committed against Him. Our Savior took the punishment that we richly deserved, and when God the Father looks at us, He sees not the wickedness of our own lives but the perfect righteousness of His Son. Even when we have lost everything else, we can still thank God that His sacrifice opened the door to eternal riches instead of the damnation in Hell Fire that we deserve.
So yes, have Thanksgiving dinner and think about all of your blessings. But do not allow Thanksgiving to end. Give thanks every single day for the blessings in your life.
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