11/23/2025
🍁 Thankful 🍁
I remember when I was a child my mother would expect to hear me saying thank you every time that I was given a gift. This was not an option. I had to say thank you regardless of what the gift was, regardless of the occasion, and regardless of how I felt about it. You see, when others give you a gift they want to see how you react, especially kids. There were many times when I received birthday and Christmas gifts from my cousins and friends. You know how that goes. They wrap the gift themselves, they bring it to you, and then they sit and wait until you open it. Many times the gifts were toys that they wanted for themselves, and so they could not wait for me to open it and play with them. Opening a gift and not saying thank you would get me into trouble with my mother. But if there was something that could sink me into the deepest of troubles with her was if I ever dared to say one of these after opening a present: “I already have one of these”; “this is not my size”; “I don’t like it”; or, “I don’t play with this anymore”. I don’t know about your mother, but my mother had these sharp nails that would dig into my skin every time that she would grab my arm whenever my big mouth would betray me.
I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes we will expect and not receive what we want, while in reality we are being gifted even when we don’t deserve. King David wrote in Psalms 100:1-5 'Shout for joy to the Lord , all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his ; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.' The problem that most people have with these words is that it is hard to do what they say. It is hard to shout for joy in the middle of mourning. It is hard to be thankful and to praise God in the middle of our struggles. Sometimes it is even harder to believe that the Lord is good and that His love endures forever when we look around and see so much hate and destruction. But what if these feelings are coming from somewhere else with the sole intention to push us farther away from God?
“Did God really say?”, that is the question that Satan asked Eve in the garden of Eden regarding the forbidden tree. We all know what happened next. I think that, today, we are still hearing that same question being asked over and over. Satan continues to lie to us, especially when we are down. When things are not going well for us, that is when the devil shows up. Before we know we begin to complain and to be unthankful. All because we believed what we heard. “Did God really say that you will never get sick, go hungry, or suffer?” It is hard to be thankful, as David said, when we believe the lies being spoken into our lives. Maybe, we should be blocking the outside noises and focus more on Jesus’ words. In John 16:33 Jesus said '“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”' In other words, we can be thankful for having peace in knowing that Jesus has our backs. Whatever it is that we are going through, He already took care of it.
So how can we show gratitude? If there is one thing that our Heavenly Father truly appreciates is when we devout ourselves to Him. Deuteronomy 10:12-13 'And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord ’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?' As a parent myself, I understand how God must feel when we do these things. You see, there isn’t a gift that could ever express how thankful a child is for their parents than showing obedience and love.
Listen to these words in case you are running out of reasons for being thankful.” Maybe you are dealing with some type of illness, or maybe your family is falling apart. Maybe you lost your job, and you’re wondering how to make ends meet. Whatever it is, remember what King David said about our God. He said, “In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.” (Psalms 95:2-5). David does a great job describing what he sees around himself, but then he looks up and says about God that 'He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.'
(Psalms 147:4). David’s son, Solomon, added that God 'gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep his command, and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.' (Proverbs 8:29). Wow! So many times we succumb to our situations that we forget how great He is. I don’t know about you but I am thankful that, even though my life is not perfect, I don’t need to worry about the oceans’ boundaries. Someone else already took care of that.
In 2016, a guy in Argentina was taking pictures of the stars with his new camera. He placed the camera behind his telescope hoping to get a few images. Little did he know that he would end up capturing an image of a supernova as it was happening. In other words, he captured an image of a star exploding and destroying everything in its system. Did I mention that this event happened in another galaxy, not ours? We have problems in our society, challenges to overcome. And yet, we should be thankful that this supernova was far away from us. Job 9.9 says about God and the constellations: 'He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the south.' Our God is not great in word only, He is bigger than any problem we could ever face. In the midst of every challenge and circumstance that we shall face, let us remember our Father’s words to “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalms 46:10). Let us be thankful as King David said in knowing that the Lord is good and that it is he who made us, and we are his.
