11/27/2025
Happy Thanksgiving!!! A greeting we say this time of year with almost the same routine as a “hey” or “hello” when we see someone. A greeting that we say without enough realization of just how much we are blessed and how much we have to be thankful for as sons and daughters of the Most High King.
Thanksgiving has become uniquely “Americanized” with visons harkening back to Pilgrims, Indians and large gatherings filled with food and (today) football…..and Thanksgiving is the time of year that often initiates the hustle and bustle of the Christmas Season and of families gathering. When Washington proclaimed a national day of thanks in 1789, his proclamation called us to a day of “pause” to give thanks to “the great Lord and Ruler of Nations” and asks Americans to thank “that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent Author of all the good” .
Moreover, in Chapter 4 of 2nd Corinthians we are reminded that we always carry around the death of Jesus in our bodies so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body, that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us to Him and that His presence and sacrifice is for our “… benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause THANKSGIVING to overflow to the glory of God” (verse 15). And in Jame 1:17 we’re reminded: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” We, as sons and daughters, get to give thanks for many good and perfect gifts but none so great as His redeeming love showered over us as a waterfall of grace.
My prayer for you is that you will find some time to pause, time to be still and to know Him, time to give thanks that God, the creator of the universe and the author of the very next breath we take, loves us tremendously and wants to lavish us in the embrace of His Grace.
As I close, I would like to leave you with a prayer by Hamilton Barber that I received this morning
A Liturgy on Gratitude
Hamilton Barber
Jesus, you are the Lord of everything,
The heir to the cattle on a thousand hills,
and yet, when you broke five loaves and two fish,
the first thing you did was give thanks.
Teach me how to thank the Father as you did.
Everything won’t always go my way.
My plans won’t always pan out,
my ideas won’t always win,
my efforts will not always succeed,
but I know yours will,
so teach me how to thank you and trust that your way is better.
When I am anxious, may I thank you for my breath.
When I am tired, may I thank you for my rest.
When I do not like myself, may I thank you for how you made me.
When I do not love my neighbor, may I thank you for how you made them.
Whatever I do,
may I glorify you.
Whatever I say,
may I honor you.
Wherever I go,
may I tell others of you.
May the overflow of my gratitude lead me to make more of you.
Whether I am surrounded by family or I am alone,
teach me how to love the people you’ve given me to love,
how to be grateful for you giving them to me,
how to wear my gratitude like a blanket I can give to those who need the warmth.
May my thanks be immediate and lavish–
generously given and never expected in return–
may it be the light by which those people who look at me
see you.
Amen.
Shalom
