Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.  No, not because of all the food, though I will not deny that’s part of it!  But rather for the lack of Easter Bunnies, tinsel and Santa.  All the things that don’t make Christian holy-days special,  only excuses for a day off of work.  Think I’ve been reading Dicken’s Christmas Carol too many times!  Bah, humbug!   I want  to dig deeper, peeling back the layers to the actual event celebrated about our Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone.

Thanksgiving Day does that for me…a time to give thanks.  To the Lord, first and foremost–‘Sing praises to the  Lord, all you His saints, and give thanks to His holy name'(Psalm 30:4).  It doesn’t take a lot of concentration to discover what to thank the Lord for.  I think of those roosters crowing every morning when we were in Hawaii.  So early too!  Bright and early, for the sun has barely begun to shine.  Then we have breakfast of eggs… and thank the Lord for what chickens give us.  And the chicken dinner we had the other night.  The Lord’s creation for us to enjoy and be nourished by.  Told you it wasn’t all about the food!

Every night we’d go down to the beach to watch the whales that are spouting in the Pacific Ocean, jumping/twirling in the air making a big splash with their tales as they hit the water.  Thank you, Lord, for the whales.  We enjoy seeing them.  And the sunsets every night were glorious.  Different every one in some way.  Thank you, Lord, for the sunsets.

Or think of your family and thank the Lord for them.  For all His providing for us, thank the Lord.  For our friends, we thank the Lord.  For a wonderful and loving church family, we thank the Lord.  For the Bible that we can be nourished with daily unlike any other ‘food’, we thank the Lord.

I could go on and on, and probably should.  But I’ll do it on my own time.  Now it’s your turn to think of all that you would like to thank the Lord for in your life.  Have an early Thanksgiving.  Have it often.  How about all the time?  ‘…that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.  O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever'(Psalm 30: 12).  Forever seems like a long-ways off…think I’ll start right now!  You too?

Prayer:  Dear God, we could never thank you enough for all the blessings in our lives.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.