
Ready to give thanks? Isn’t that a strange question to ask at Thanksgiving? For years, the grocery stores in our cities have been overflowing with the fruits that grow in our homeland or in the wider world. Our economy has flourished to an extent unknown to the generations before us. Don’t we have reason enough to celebrate Thanksgiving in town and country?
It all depends on the Giver
But are we really prepared to thank God the Father at all times and for everything? It takes more than a good harvest and a flourishing economy; it also takes more than enough money in our pockets and plenty of food in the cupboard. Only those who have been given gifts are prepared to give thanks in this way if they know that they have been given gifts by God out of pure goodness and mercy without any merit of their own. But we often don’t want to admit this. Or we forget it surprisingly quickly. That’s why Thanksgiving is all about the Giver. It is important to recognize Him and thank Him.
Empowered by God!
How do we come to this insight and to the healing of our blindness and forgetfulness? Luther says in his explanation of the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “We ask in this prayer that He would let us recognize and receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.” Beginning every Thanksgiving with this petition will keep us from demeaning God as just a friendly helper, to whom we allow a kind word, but instead truly honor Him as the one “without whom there is nothing that is, from whom we have everything.”
Do we not especially need this knowledge to be equipped to give thanks? After all, we are a generation proud of our achievements.
Now it is certainly not wrong to rejoice in our successful work and to tirelessly research and plan how we can provide daily bread for an ever-growing human race. After all, we still have a mission today as in the past: “Subdue the earth!”
There is no doubt that there would have been terrible famines in the world if the yields of fields and meadows had not increased considerably over the last few centuries, thanks to a number of new insights and important discoveries.
Is this an independent human achievement? Or does the following also apply to what has been discovered in laboratories and carefully tested in research institutes: “It passes through our hands but comes from God”?
Giving thanks in the name of Jesus
Are we ready to give thanks? The right answer to this is not given by our intellect, nor by our religious convictions. God Himself gives it to us because He has revealed Himself in His power and goodness in Jesus Christ.
That is why our thanks on Thanksgiving can only be given in the name of Jesus. It is thanks to Him that we can call God our Father. He has earned us the right to be His children. That is why we can thank God at all times and for everything. Our thanksgiving is only genuine if it is a verse in the great song of praise that praises the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for all the blessings with which we are blessed through Him.
Are we ready for such thanksgiving, which is not silenced but brought before God every day? Then this also includes saying grace, which has disappeared in many homes. We should learn it anew: We live from the giving hands of God. “Therefore give thanks to Him, give thanks and hope in Him!”
Be the first to comment