November 25, 2010
Thanks-Giving
The world has a way of redirecting our holidays and Thanksgiving has not been spared. According to Webster’s, thanksgiving is, “the act of giving thanks, a prayer expressing gratitude, a public acknowledgment or celebration of divine goodness – Thanksgiving Day. Example: They sang a hymn of thanksgiving.” The world today would have us emphasize the ‘giving’, rather than the ‘thanks’. We are encouraged to fill community pantries, donate to soup kitchens and help fill a box of groceries for a family in need. Those are all commendable actions, but by our donating to a cause we, rather than God, become the ones getting thanked. God needs to hear our thanksgiving for what we ourselves have received.
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Gail;
-----The inability to sense anything beyond the physical substance of this universe has been seized by many as an excuse to deny God His glory. He is clearly seen in the things He has made. But as Jesus said, it takes eyes to see the wonders of God in His creation and ears to hear the story of Him in His communications to man. That is, it takes the honesty to admit what you see and hear in order to have enough perception to observe God in the things through which He makes Himself known. Yet, “...they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.” (Romans 1:19) They think that since honesty and perception are not perceivable by the five senses, these can be hidden from their acknowledgments and no one will notice either their own ignorance nor God.
-----I am thankful that God does not need man’s acknowledgement to exist as He is. I am thankful that He works regardless of the futility of most, and that their futility, which builds into this world deep despair, is a vapor in the wind to His plan. And even more, I am thankful that His plan to vanquish all despair along with the one who fathered it and those who follow it was the very reason for the creation of this world gone so away from righteousness. For the Lamb Who would defeat evil by His sacrificial love, “...was destined before the foundation of the world...” (I Pet 1:20), and as those who are abandoning the despair and abiding in the hope, “...we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Eph 2:10)
----I am thankful His plan is immutable, having been predetermined before this creation. I am thankful that the suffocating ignorance of those who deny Him suffocates only those who ignore Him. And I am more thankful that it is by neither brilliance nor good works that we who honor Him have the breathe of life in Him. Otherwise I would suffocate as well.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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