November 26, 2020
Dear friends,
We were made for Thanksgiving.
We were not made for second and third and fourth helpings of sweet potatoes covered in brown sugar and Rice Krispies™. We were not made for watching the Cowboys or the Lions while in a partial food-coma. We were not made for getting a jump on Christmas shopping with great Black Friday deals.
Those things are all fine. Who’s counting helpings anyhow? And who doesn’t like good deals?
Those things are all fine, but we weren’t made for them.
We were, however, made for Thanksgiving.
And how could you not be thankful? All the assorted turmoil in our land notwithstanding, we’d have to be blind not to recognize the countless blessings we have from God. Consider just the beginning of Luther’s list of items that pertain to the daily needs of this body and life from the Small Catechism: food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods.
And that’s just the basic, temporal stuff. How about forgiveness, life, and salvation? Once upon a time you were going to die in your sins, and the grave would not release you but into the jaws of hell. But now you have been redeemed. You have been given life. You have been raised through baptism so that you can live forever. Once you were enslaved to sin so that nothing you did was righteous or good. But now you have been set free to live a new life, born again to be holy as God is holy.
There’s more than you can imagine to be thankful for.
And you were made for Thanksgiving. In giving thanks you glorify God. You make known the greatness of his name so that a world that does not know him can see how good our God is. In giving thanks you trample underfoot the devil, who wants you to believe that your Father does not love you and that he has given nothing good to you. In giving thanks your heart is prepared to receive ever anew the overflowing mercies of God. His mercy is like the oil that was poured from the widow’s jar into vessel after vessel after vessel until there wasn’t anywhere left to put any more oil (2 Kings 4:1-7). He gives until you are full.
You were made for Thanksgiving, and you were made for blessedness and peace because the one who is thankful knows that he has received only good things from the hand of a heavenly Father who loves him with perfect love.
Giving thanks is not just a good idea now and again. Giving thanks is what you were made and redeemed for:
“And out of them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice of them that make merry: and I will multiply them, and they shall not be few; I will also glorify them, and they shall not be small” (Jeremiah 30:19).
“Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” (Psalm 118:1).
God bless and keep you,
Pr. Buchs