A Season of Thanksgiving

Monroeville Community Park, Pittsburgh, PA

I can't believe it's already late into November. It seemed like the leaves were brilliant with color on the trees one day and then all dried up on the ground the next. Now winter is intruding into autumn as flurries fill the frigid air.

Still, I think November is a great month for many reasons. First of all, it contains my favorite holiday: Thanksgiving. It is also the month I met my husband (24th). Finally, both mine (22nd) and Daniel's birthdays (13th) are this month. We have much to celebrate and much to be thankful for.

In this country, November also marks the "season of thanksgiving." And, as Jesus would have it, this has been a season in my own life of learning what it means to be thankful. Indeed, the Bible is explicit that God's people should be a thankful people (i.e. Ephesians 5:20). It is an expectation and command. And what other response should overflow from a people chosen by God, saved by His grace, and given every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (Romans 8:28-30; Ephesians 1:3). Thanksgiving should be our natural, spontaneous response to the lavish love and grace of God displayed to us through Jesus Christ.

But like I said, I am learning this right now, which means I have not been overflowing with thankfulness. In fact, I have been doing quite the opposite: grumbling about my circumstances and allowing roots of bitterness to spring forth. I have been focusing on the negative circumstances in my life and blind to the many gifts God gives me each day. The busyness of the many changes in my life, the continuing grief, spiritual warfare, and unanswered prayers have seemed to sideline me, to knock me off track. I just finished a book called One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, which God used to awaken me to the clench-fist grip I have on my life and to the many ways He specifically and carefully and masterfully shows His continual love and care for me each day. Since reading that book, I have starting counting some of the sweet gifts that God gives me each day and taking the time to thank Him for them, instead of just barely giving them a nod and moving on.

But the root of this is much deeper than a failure to acknowledge God’s goodness and provision. It stems from a lack of trust in God Himself. God has been beckoning me to notice the good things He showers me with each day to be sure, but, more than that, He is calling me to trust Him with abandon. This I have not been doing. Despite the many ways He has provided and cared and blessed me, I have been short-sighted and forgetful. I have doubted His intentions and heart toward me. This is sin. I have been sinfully blind to all that God is for me and has done for me in Jesus Christ, and have been resistant to entrust my family and future plans into His sovereign, good, and all-wise care (as if I could do a better job than Him). I have been struggling in my faith and I am unsure how to get back to where I once was. But this I know and believe: God always completes what He starts (Philippians 1:6) and feeling like I am at the end of myself is always a good place to be (2 Corinthians 1:8-10). Because when I am weak, He is very, very strong (2 Corinthians 12:8-10).

But I will sing of Your strength;
I will sing aloud of Your steadfast love in the morning.
For You have been to me a fortress
and a refuge in the day of my distress.
O my Strength, I will sing praises to You,
for You, O God, are my fortress,
the God who shows me steadfast love. Psalm 59:16-17