Tomorrow is Thanksgiving! It’s one of my favorite holidays. People tend to pause and count their blessings. It’s a great exercise. Counting your blessings has a huge impact on our outlook and the quality of our lives.
In fact, we need to make the choice to be thankful the other 364 days of the years as well. Thankfulness really is a choice. In 1 Thessalonians 5:15, the Bible says, “in every thing give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you.” Unfortunately, we tend to focus on what we don’t have instead of what we do have. We prefer to think about what’s wrong instead of what’s right.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about some kind of Pollyanna approach that denies the reality of hard stuff. But, it is true that there is great value in being thankful even in the rough patches of life. The one constant in our lives when all else seems dark is the presence and provision of God. And for that we can rejoice.
But in most seasons we can very easily find much to be thankful for if we’ll take the time to look.
G. Campbell Morgan was a man known to practice the discipline of thankfulness. One day he was mugged by a man who beat him up and stole his wallet. Upon hearing the news, his friends wondered how he would demonstrate thankfulness in such an unpleasant experience. He shared with them, “I am thankful that though I was hurt, I was not hurt bad; and I am thankful that although my money was stolen, it was not much; and I am very thankful that I was the one robbed and not the one doing the robbing.”
May we be as intentional about Thanksgiving.
