I love living in a place where the changing of the seasons
is seen and felt and even smelled. I love watching the leaves fall and then be
replaced with a blanket of snow. Life is never boring or stale. There is always
something new for which to be thankful when you look with expectancy.
Life, too, has changing seasons. Some of those seasons are
filled with joy and we look with expectancy to the blessings that follow. Others
are filled with struggles that make you wonder if you can make it through
another day. We tend to lose that joyful expectancy and find fear and worry and
doubt that God’s blessing is even in the same hemisphere.
If your family is in a place of questioning…of challenges…of
anxiety… of fear of the unknown, you may be struggling to find an attitude of
gratitude this Thanksgiving. There are families all around our community this
holiday season that are facing really difficult times and wondering how they
can rediscover their thankful heart. They are in my thoughts so much of the
time and many prayers have been offered for them.
As I look to scripture to find hope for those who struggle,
I am drawn to the Christmas story. The
timing was all wrong, the circumstances unimaginable, the challenge
incomprehensible. Yet God was in it. His signature was all over it. He was
using every bit of the story and every role played out to bring about the most
beautiful story of love, grace and redemption.
This week we all take time out for Thanksgiving. For pausing
to enjoy a full table and a full house. We give thanks for a God who provides…
for our needs and our wants. Our lives are full, particularly when compared to
most of the rest of the world and, on a good day, we are able to be gracious
and appreciate it. How about taking a new approach to gratitude and thanking
Him for all the things we don’t understand. For all the things that make no sense.
For those things that it seems He should have prevented, but didn’t. Being
thankful in ALL things seems like a stretch, but when you look at the story of
Mary and Joseph, of being a given a child they did not create, of the escape
from a King who wanted to kill their infant Son. When you look back 2,000 years
and then look forward to the present, you can see that, in spite of the devastating
circumstances, God was working it all for your benefit.
This year, as you gather around the table and share what you
are thankful for, consider adding the invisible goodness of God to the list.
That may not make sense to your kids. Maybe not even to you. But, take a minute
to think about the fact that a God who could have anything, wants you. Flawed,
imperfect, sometimes self-centered, impatient, and just plain ugly in attitude.
He made you--- purposefully, gifted you, choose you, called you, and wants to
be reconciled with you. Can you even imagine? And that reconciliation involved
leaving heaven and facing brutality beyond what we can imagine. But, He wanted
you bad enough to endure all for you.
That being the case, try to see that God is all over your
mess. The overwhelming struggles of your life are not unnoticed by Him. God is
faithful and God is good. No matter what life looks like to you right now, He
hasn’t taken His eyes off of you and He never will. He is building and shaping
and making the future what it needs to be for a purpose we may never know. How
do I know that? I know HIM and I know that He is good and faithful.
May your heart be filled with gratitude for the things that
you don’t understand as you celebrate the goodness of God and the blessings
that feel a whole lot more like trials.
Give thanks in all circumstances;
for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
1 Thessalonians 5:18
Happy Thanksgiving!
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