Thank You is Something You Say

I worked as a high schooler on several turkey farms in central Texas. In the 1970s farmers in Mills County raised hundreds of thousands of turkeys mainly for the eggs. They shipped those eggs all over the world.
Sometimes a turkey would be injured, and the owner would want to cull it out of the flock. On one such occasion, the owner suggested that I kill a turkey with a stick and take it home to my family for Thanksgiving. I was eager to do so. I grabbed a stick about six feet long, ran after the turkey, and took a big swing, breaking the turkey’s neck. But then I realized, somehow, that I had taken too big a swath, for there were two turkeys down, killed instantly by my single blow. I felt terrible and wondered what was about to happen. The owner was amused rather than upset. Knowing the size of my family, he suggested that I take two turkeys home for thanksgiving. Is it correct to say that the Lord provided abundantly for our Thanksgiving that year?
God gave a calendar of events to his people in Leviticus 23. He scheduled seven events annually for his people. They are called “feasts.” These seven feasts are celebrations of the bounty and goodness of God. God invites his people to be his guests at the feasts.
My thanksgiving is threatened by anxiety and fear. It’s not that I am ungrateful. It is, rather, that I have no emotional energy left for gratitude because fear consumes it all. I am grateful for what I have but fearful that I will lose it.
My thanksgiving is also threatened by forgetfulness. I too often forget the grace of God in which I stand. When I overlook grace, I also overlook gratitude.
These observations are intended to help preserve and cultivate the spirit of gratitude:
First, thanksgiving is something you do: “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving” (Psalm 100:4). Thanksgiving was an event in the OT. It was an activity that humans engaged in—the giving of thanks. Jesus gave thanks over and over again on many different occasions including the night in which he was betrayed.
Among the Jews, the table blessing is always a blessing of God rather than of the food. It is not so much, "Bless this food," but "Blessed be God who gave this food." The little prayer, "God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food" captures the essence of the Jewish table blessing and the blessing as Jesus spoke it.
We are commanded to give thanks. Perhaps your situation is very bleak and you feel that you cannot give thanks. I suggest you set aside your feelings for a moment. Just do it. Do it in obedience. Give thanks to God. Think of things to say thank you for. Deliberately, meditatively give thanks. Feelings follow obedience in this matter of thanksgiving, not the other way around.
And thankful is something you are: “Be thankful unto him” (Psalm 100:4).
Those first pilgrims in Plymouth Colony almost had a day of mourning in 1621. They had suffered through a terrible winter and lost many of their friends and family members. Their little village was surrounded by the graves of children and parents and grandparents who had not survived. Mourning seemed appropriate. Instead, though, they turned their hearts to gratitude and celebrated a day of thanksgiving.
The first time that the Thanksgiving holiday was uniformly celebrated throughout these United States was in 1863 by presidential proclamation. The country could easily have observed a day of mourning then as well, given the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans during the War Between the States.
Every day can be a day of mourning or a day of gratitude. Perhaps a little of both is mixed into every day. But we must decide if we are going to receive each day as a gift or as a burden. Will we focus upon our loss or upon our blessings? It is up to us.
The Lord’s Supper could have been a meal of mourning. It is about the shed blood and broken body of our Lord. Instead, though, it is called the “cup of thanksgiving” which we drink, the Eucharist, which means “thanksgiving.”
Gratitude is a sign of spiritual health.An ungrateful spirit is a sure sign of spiritual sickness. Note these words of the Apostle Paul from Romans 1:21: For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Futility is the companion of the ungrateful spirit. You will never know such a downward spiral until you sink into self-pity and miserable contemplation. That sort of thinking is the true bottomless pit.
Darkness is the companion of the ungrateful spirit. Their foolish hearts were darkened when they refused to give thanks. Gratitude is the declaration that life is a gift to be received with thanksgiving. Darkness settles on the soul which cannot see life as a divine gift.
My father had a farm on Hogg Creek near Crawford, Texas, not far from the ranch of President Bush. One evening I was sitting in a deer stand with my rifle when a flock of buzzards came in and landed high up in the trees above me. There were dozens of the nasty birds, and I was disgusted with them.
Just before dark, though, a flock of wild turkeys came noisily through the woods. They decided that they liked these trees, too, and began to flap their way into the lower branches and limbs. They startled the buzzards, which took flight and found another perch for the night. Maybe your Thanksgiving turkey will run off the buzzards!
One more observation about Thanksgiving:
Thank you is something you say: “for the Lord is good...” (Psalm 100:5). God deserves to be thanked out loud.
The spoken “thank you” touches the speaker. Jesus said “thank you” so often to his father in Heaven, as noted in the Gospels. Think of the thousands of times that Jesus said thank you that are not recorded. It was a habit of his life to speak his thankfulness to God.
I find that my spoken words are important to my own well-being. Sometimes I have to talk to myself. The spoken word has a power to touch and change even the one who speaks.
The spoken word also touches the hearers. Others about you will be touched and encouraged by your verbalization of gratitude. This is one reason why public prayer is so important. The public prayers of Jesus were full of thanksgiving. Offer a public prayer of gratitude at your family gathering this year. Do not lunge into the meal without first pausing and acknowledging the great God who has given every good thing to us.
You will never know the full impact of your prayers of gratitude upon the hearts of your children. Children are inclined to be grateful and to offer their prayers without inhibition unto God. Yet when they hear your gratitude they learn that God is glorious and that all of our lives we are dependent upon him. They learn the proper posture for living.
So speak out loud that “thank you” to God this Thanksgiving. It will bless you and your family and friends. And it will bless the Eternal God who made all things for us to enjoy.