Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
It’s Thanksgiving.
This is another holiday that has fallen victim to the secularization of society.
Whatever you watch, you’ll hear that Thanksgiving is about gathering with friends and family to belly up to the trough and eat like there’s no tomorrow. There might be some murmurings about Pilgrims and natives and how one group managed to save the other, depending on your own political spin. My favorite football team will almost certainly lose in spectacular fashion.
Some will dare to say we should focus on what we’re thankful for. But, the very word, Thanksgiving, means that your thanks are going somewhere, directed at someone. You give thanks, which is an action, not a feeling. Being thankful to no one in particular rings pretty hollow.
Now, the Bible has a lot to say about this idea. I contend that giving thanks is a phrase that, along with a few others, forms a “faith family” of words and ideas. That is, the Scripture uses several different terms to speak of faith in its different aspects.
Sometimes faith looks forward and becomes confident about the work of God in the future. We call this kind of faith “hope.”
When faith is challenged to interpret present circumstances in light of the truth of God’s word, this is called “trust.” We trust what he says is true, regardless of how things look around us.
The “fear of the Lord” is a prominent theme in the Old Testament. It, too, is a way of referring to faith. When we believe God enough to reject our idols and change our behavior, we can rightly be called “God-fearing.”
Thanksgiving is a term that belongs in this little family of expressions. When faith looks backward (like hope looks forward) and remembers the mighty works of God in the past, thanksgiving is how faith responds.
I’ve concluded there are three major culprits when we ask, “So how come I’m not more thankful?”
For one, it’s hard to be thankful for something you haven’t received. If you buy me a new car, I’ll be very thankful, but don’t expect me to give you thanks before the keys are in my hand. I’ll be thankful when I’ve received it and not before.
I’m convinced this is a major reason so few people overflow with thanks toward God. They don’t believe they’ve received anything. Or they’re not sure, not impressed.
Another reason for the lack of thanksgiving among us is entitlement. Everything good we have, we assume we have a right to it. It’s the way it should be, and that’s that. I’ll be proven correct the next time you lose a blessing and act like some cosmic injustice has occurred. You deserved that blessing, after all.
The third block to our giving of thanks is suffering. Being put through life’s wringer has a way of focusing all our attention on what’s hurting us. That’s understandable. I’m guilty of it pretty routinely.
Tonight, Wednesday the 27th, there will be a community worship service put on by the newly formed Ministerial Alliance at 6 p.m. at First Baptist Church in Tucumcari. Y’all come, and let’s encourage real thanksgiving in each other.
Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at: