On Thanksgiving and Saying “You’re Welcome”

This blog is an edited repost from a couple years past. Happy Thanksgiving 2014, everyone.

It’s Thanksgiving day, and we’re all gearing up for Black Friday.  Let’s pause and think.  Is something wrong with that sentence?

This is not the way I remember it.  Growing up in New England, Thanksgiving was a big deal.  My family would travel to be with extended family in Massachusetts and Maine.  We got out of school early due to the much-cherished “half day.”  Then we drove and drove.  It’s funny what you remember as a kid.  The tightly packed car, cold feet, brief gas station stops, incessant reading with a booklight (I read for hours and hours and hours), and then actually arriving at the destination.  Tired but excited.  Family all around.  Anticipation of being together the next day.

What do we look forward to now?  Shopping.  Are you kidding me? If the focus of a family in Thanksgiving Week is getting up early enough to buy stuff, and not to thank the Lord for his bountiful kindness, something seems fundamentally askew to me.  We’ve missed the mark somewhere.

The sweetest things in life are restorative and others-centered.  Thanksgiving exemplifies this.  It is a common grace moment to remember God’s special grace.  It is about, fundamentally, the Lord.  It is a day set aside for him.  It is a day not to integrate, to engage, if we can help it.  It is a day to rest and be with loved ones.  It should be pervaded by a sense that we deserve nothing.  God deserves everything.  And yet the mystery before us: we have so much.  We have so much more than we could ever want or think.  This is because of God and his grace shed abroad in Jesus Christ.  This is, therefore, his day.

Today, engage in the liturgy of gratitude. Think on the kindness of our king, and give thanks to God. Live with thankfulness borne of of the eternal kindness he has shown us in Christ. Thanksgiving–the act, the liturgy–is not only good, but good for us. It takes us out of ourselves and situates us in right thinking toward God. It reminds us that we are like the Pilgrims who first came to America. We are refugees making our way to a greater country. We have a home, but it is a temporary one.

Speaking of the Pilgrims, do something old-fashioned: read about the Pilgrims (good book for families here).  Read about how they gave thanks to God.  Celebrate them and their legacy with your family.  Don’t make them sound weird or silly or awful.  Be thankful to God for them. Be old-fashioned.  Be weird. Be traditional. If possible, set aside some time to rest and pray and enjoy and eat.  This is a day of thankfulness.  Narcissism and entitlement has no place here.  The Pilgrims were not celebrating their worthiness in making it over here.  They were setting their hearts like a tractor beam on God and his goodness.  So should we.

I close with a verse from the old King James :

The LORD hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad (Psalm 126:3).