Three Star Night

Photographer: sebastien b. of flickr under CC2.0, and this new work is hereby released under a similar CC3.0 license.

Note: I always find Thanksgiving posts difficult to write.  I even wrote Friday's post before I wrote this one.  Historically, Thanksgiving has been a difficult holiday for me.  It always seemed like an arbitrary day where people get together and force themselves to feel warm and fuzzy about things that they weren't particularly happy about the other 364 days of the year.  Thoughts like Well at least I have _____________ or Well at least things aren't like _____________ would come to mind, and then I would try to convince myself why I really should be happy about whatever I did have.

That's when I started thinking about thankfulness itself.  I think we've reduced it to a mere warm and fuzzy feeling (much like our concept of forgiveness), but it's much more than that.  There's a reason why we should feel warm and fuzzy, and that's because there is some knowledge of a fact or set of facts that has stirred our passions because of its immense or extraordinary nature.  And if we don't feel thankful, it is not our feelings that are lacking but rather our understanding of the facts.

I've met people who are genuinely thankful for Christ, but I've also met people who felt that they should be thankful but weren't really "feeling it."  These people may know the facts of the Gospel, but their understanding of those facts is lacking.  They don't understand the immensity and extraordinary-ness of it.  The utter mind-boggling-ness that God cloaked his Deity in the form of a baby that cries and poops and needs milk, grew up knowing but resisting every form of temptation, died one of the most horrific deaths humans have ever devised, experienced the infinite wrath of the Father multiplied by the number of people (who hate and despise Him, by the way) who He would bring into His kingdom and into a relationship with Himself, and furthermore gave them His very own Spirit as a counselor, guide, and promise of their future inheritance that they would never be alone.

Examine the facts, and let your heart follow.  Have a happy Thanksgiving.