Today we’re spending some extra time in church to stop and tell God, “Thank you!” Today is Thanksgiving, a day when all Canadians are called to stop and give thanks for what we have. For followers of Jesus, we turn to God to give thanks, knowing that everything we have comes from God. It’s easy to think that we’ve earned what we have, that our hard work has gotten us to where we are at in life, but the reality is that there are always others who have worked harder than we have, are smarter than we are, have more skills and talents than we do, and yet we still have more. God, for his reasons, has blessed us with what we have, no matter how much or how little, and we’re called to be thankful.
But
there’s so much more to be thankful for than simply stuff. Psalm 136 is a psalm
that simply rings out in thankfulness, repeating over and over again, “His love endures forever,” reminding us of the reason
of our gratitude, a refrain of praise that, by the end of the psalm, is firmly planted
deeply inside our hearts and minds. We give thanks to God for he is good and his love endures forever. This
first verse sets the tone for the rest of the psalm. The word for good in
Hebrew is ‘tov’ and means morally good,
desirable, pleasant, kind, and merry. Think of a person you know who is
kind, happy, morally good, and friendly and you have a tiny glimpse of what God
is like. This is someone that most people are attracted to, someone that you
want to know and have in your life. This is why sharing your faith doesn’t need
to be scary, because Jesus is someone that most people want to know, want to
have in their life.
Our
God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, there’s no one
greater than God, no one who can do more, or love more than God. God’s great
love is especially shown in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for our sin. Imagine
what Jesus took on himself, all the sin and brokenness of the world, just
because he loves you so much that he wants to be with you for eternity. His love endures forever! The God who made the heavens
and the earth, the artist who created all the flowers, the night skies, the
seascapes and landscapes, all the beauty and wonder in the world, loves you
enough to die for you because he wants you to be with him forever.
God
saves his people out of slavery and oppression. The psalmist is
referring to the time Israel spent as slaves in Egypt and the oppression they
faced there under their Egyptian slave masters. God hears his people’s cries
and he responds. God still hears the cries of those who are slaves and
oppressed, whether it’s young girls and women enslaved for their bodies in our
country, or slaves in other countries around the world, and he still responds
and calls us to be his presence in working for freedom for the slaves in the
world. God can save you from the things you have found yourselves a slave to,
he can save you from the brokenness in your hearts and lives, he can restore
you again. Through Jesus’ death on the cross and the gift of the Holy Spirit,
we’re saved from our slavery to sin, to addiction, or to the lies of Satan that
keep telling us that we’re not worthy to be saved or loved. Psalm 136 reminds
us that God’s love endures forever, his love for
you never comes to an end and his love can free us, renew us and restore us.
God
protects his people.
The psalmist here talks about how God protected his people during the time
right after God led them out of slavery from the nations around them who wanted
to destroy the Israelites. As God led them out of slavery, God guided them,
showing his people where to go and when to go, even dividing the Red Sea so
they could get through the sea on dry ground, and then protecting his people by
swallowing up Pharoah and his army in the water when he closed the path through
the sea back up over them.
God
has given us his Holy Spirit to protect us from our sin, addictions, anxiety, and
all the other things that can break us and hurt us by reminding us of
everything that Jesus taught, by praying for us when we’re unable to pray and
talk with God. When we feel that we are being attacked by fear, worry, anxiety,
and more, God doesn’t leave us to fend for ourselves, but, as Jesus promised his
disciples, he will never abandon us or leave us alone. The Holy Spirit is not
only God with us, but is God in us because his love
endures forever, and he will protect us. And when we fall, when life
gets hard and feels like we’re alone and forgotten, when we’re at our weakest,
Jesus is there.
We’re
reminded that God provides. He remembers us in our low estate and
frees us from our enemies. He gives food to every creature because his love endures forever. Today is Thanksgiving, a day
where many of us will eat an extra special or large meal with our family and
loved ones. We often measure our thankfulness by how much food is on our tables
and in our freezers, and sometimes we believe that the more we have, the more
God loves us, but we need to hear this verse a little more clearly, “he gives food to every creature.” God’s love endures forever, but is also too big to keep
only for only his people, but his love extends to every creature. Often God
provides through us and the wealth and abundance he has given to us to share.
As
followers of Jesus, as children of God, we’re called to live lives of thankfulness
and gratitude. Ann Voskamp writes, “Practicing gratitude means being
thankful, counting your blessings, noticing simple pleasures, and acknowledging
everything that you receive. It is learning to live as if everything were a
miracle and being aware on a continuous basis of how much we’ve been given.
Living a life of gratitude does not mean that life is perfect. It also does not
mean that we live in denial of the burdens that we carry or somehow rise above
the challenges that we face by choosing blissful ignorance. Rather, it is
simply affirming that there is good to be found in our lives even in the midst
of chaos and difficulty. It shifts our focus from what life lacks to the
abundance that God has given us.”
Ann
Voskamp also shares some of the benefits that come from living with a sense of
gratitude and keeping a gratitude list, writing down 3 things every day you are
thankful for. These are based on different studies, “It’s habits that can
imprison you and it’s habits that can free you. But when thanks to
God becomes a habit — so joy in God becomes your life. And
with this habit of keeping a gratitude list? You:
1. Have a relative
absence of stress and depression. (Woods et al., 2008)
2. Make progress
towards important personal goals (Emmons and McCullough, 2003)
3. Report higher
levels of determination and energy (Emmons and McCullough, 2003)
4. Feel closer in
their relationships and desire to build stronger relationships (Algoe and
Haidt, 2009)
5. Increase your
happiness by 25% — (Who wouldn’t want a quarter more happiness!) (McCullough et
al., 2002)”
Faith
and thankfulness go hand in hand and impact our daily lives, which is why
we show up here on Thanksgiving, not just because the government gives us a day
off, but because God’s love endures forever, it
flows into us, out of us, and into the world, and back to God himself. Go from
here with hearts filled with thankfulness and gratitude and may it flow into
the lives of those around you.
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