October 9, 2005
WHEN YOU GIVE thanks you are acknowledging that you are not self-sufficient. You appreciate what someone has added to your life. People who are thankful for what they have received from God or from those around them “put out the welcome mat” for positive life-giving relationships. They understand the need for and value of community. Someone once said, “No man is an island.” We need each other and others need us. And a spirit of thanksgiving can make that fact a pleasant reality rather than something to be resented. An atmosphere of joyful appreciation creates a wonderful community, especially when it is centred around a common relationship with Jesus. People thank one another for acts of kindness received and thank God for each other. The apostle Paul had a lifestyle of thanking God for the people in his life: “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you?” (1 Thessalonians 3:9)
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Some more thoughts on thanksgiving:
If anyone would tell you the shortest, surest way to happiness and all perfection, he must tell you to make it a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you. For it is certain that whatever seeming calamity happens to you, if you thank and praise God for it, you turn it into a blessing.
(William Law)
A preacher of an earlier generation said this about gratitude: "Gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic." What did he mean? He meant that gratitude, like a vaccine, can prevent the invasion of a disgruntled, discouraged spirit. Like an antitoxin, gratitude can prevent the affects of the poisons of cynicism, criticalness, and grumbling. Like an antiseptic, a spirit of gratitude can soothe and heal the most troubled spirit.
(John Yates)
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He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me,
and he prepares the way
so that I may show him the salvation of God."
(Psalm 50:23)
This page was last updated on Saturday, October 8, 2005