2024 Week 49

Hello, Springers!

Happy Thanksgiving from Lincoln, Nebraska. Gina and I will be back home in time for church on Sunday, but in the meantime, we are enjoying the holiday with our children and dear friends. 

In our home, it is no secret that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Cultivating gratitude is vital in my life. I recognize that it is too easy to be pulled off course by the negative events and attitudes that surround us and that I find inside me warring against my heart and mind.

Two tools of gratitude help me in this war over and over again. 

One tool is obvious to the Christian – God’s word. Philippians 1:3 is a verse that someone once gave me as a gift: “I thank my God every time I remember you.” To know that someone is grateful to God for your presence in their life is a balm to the soul. So then, letting someone know that you are grateful to God for them is a supreme act of gratitude that is galvanizing for the giver as well as the receiver.

The second tool is distinctly American, like the Thanksgiving holiday itself – Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation. When our family was stationed in Germany several years ago, it became something I read before we ate Thanksgiving dinner with friends. Now, each year, when I read it, I find it hard to choke back the tears. I don’t think they are sentimental tears, but rather, they are tears of deepening gratitude. 

Lincoln was a man who saw many terrible things throughout his lifetime. Yet when he ascended to the highest office in the land and oversaw arguably the worst moment in American history, he proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving (and also national repentance) before God Almighty. The humility of Lincoln to make such a proclamation is a lesson to anyone who is tempted to become cynical in light of life’s disappointments. 

My prayer for you this week is that you will use these tools and others that are available to you to cultivate gratitude in your own life especially this Thanksgiving.

Don’t skip past this important day. Don’t neglect to cultivate thanksgiving to God.

in Christ,

Pastor Tag