What Is Thanksgiving and it's Meaning?

 

Is Thanksgiving more than a day off, a parade, football, and a meal that takes hours to prepare and a few minutes to eat? Can it be more than that?

In the fall of 1621, just over 50 colonists attended the meal that became Thanksgiving including 22 men, four married women, and more than 25 children and teenagers. These were the fortunate ones who had made it through the rough voyage across the Atlantic into the New World. They made it through the extremely harsh winter during which disease took the lives of nearly half the original group. 

The majority of the women who had arrived on the Mayflower had died during the first winter. For the English, the first Thanksgiving was celebrating that they had survived their first year in New England. The Plymouth colonists were likely outnumbered more than two-to-one at the event by their Native American guests. 

While the 1621 event may not have been called Thanksgiving, thanksgiving was certainly present in that historic celebration, just as it would play a defining role in how the tradition developed over the centuries.  

Like the original colonist, few have understood the power of giving thanks as thoroughly as Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, and novelist. Here’s what Wiesel said on the Oprah Winfrey show:

OPRAH: “There may be no better person than you to speak about living with gratitude. Despite all the tragedy you've witnessed, do you still have a place inside you for gratefulness?”

ELIE: “Absolutely. Right after the war, I went around telling people, "Thank you just for living, for being human." And to this day, the words that come most frequently from my lips are, "Thank you." When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”

We hear a lot about being thankful, but living a life of gratitude isn’t easy. It requires time, effort, and faithful practice.

“Without effort, feelings of gratitude are often fleeting, passing as quickly as they come. For example, I’m grateful to have a clean bill of health but gripe as soon as a cold interferes with my busy life. I have a kitchen filled with food but complain about cooking and a closet filled with clothes but, “nothing to wear.”      Tiffany Musik Matthews 

Gratitude takes a conscious effort. In order to be grateful, we must first take the time to recognize that something has been done for our benefit. The culture’s prevalent attitude, ‘of what have you done for me lately,’ reflects expectation, not gratitude.

Gratitude is reflected in acts of kindness and generosity and is an indicator that something good has taken place. Is there a difference between experiencing a warm, fuzzy feeling from time to time and living a life of gratitude? Dr. Robert Emmons, Professor of psychology at UC Davis says,

“Feeling grateful is not the same as being a grateful person, a grateful a person is one who regularly affirms the goodness in his or her life and recognizes that the sources of this goodness lie at least partially outside of themselves.” Notice that Emmons says outside ourselves, not from us or because of us.

Those with a grateful heart feel more intensely grateful, on a regular basis, for multiple things, toward multiple people. While being grateful for positive events or moments of good fortune seems simple, but having a disposition toward gratitude suggests something more. For a Christ-follower a grateful heart is being thankful for salvation and for God’s blessings, but it is also able to be grateful in difficult circumstances.

Being truly grateful extends beyond convenience. As receivers of salvation and divine grace, we should strive to be grateful in all seasons of our lives. Titus 3:4-5. The evidence is clear that cultivating gratitude in our lives makes us happier and healthier people, but practicing gratitude is easier said than done. 

We can all find reasons to be grateful, but unfortunately, it’s more difficult to be appreciative of others. Kelsy Richardson, who did her graduate research on gratitude at Fuller Seminary, named pride as a major deterrent to gratitude said, “You would think that the opposite of being grateful is being ungrateful, but it’s actually selfishness or self-conceit. When you believe you deserve the good things you receive, you don’t feel the need to be grateful to others.”

In today’s age of entitlement, many are mistaken to think that all social problems, economic insecurity, poverty, racism and even their own discomfort will end today or tomorrow. Many have come to expect that their lives should have less discomfort, but we are not God and cannot guarantee what we desire. Gratitude also goes against our need to feel in control of our environment. “Sometimes with gratitude you just have to accept life as it is and be grateful for what you have,” says Emmons.

In daily life, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy. Brother David Steindl-Rast

 

Grasping Gratitude

Gratitude does not come from having things go our way or from having more. Gratitude is a byproduct of a way of seeing things. Psalm 103:2-5 says,

"Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things."

Notice the psalmist says to not forget all of God’s benefits.
Do you? Do I? I think we do. Why is it so difficult to be grateful? In order to be grateful, we need to recognize that something has been done for our benefit. To be grateful we must believe not just that benefits are coming our way, but that they don't come at random or by accident.

They come from somewhere outside ourselves. They come from somebody, a benefactor, and there has to be a beneficiary: one who receives the good. That's you and I.

You are the beneficiary of the benefits from God…
who has your best interests at heart. The beneficiary has a crucial part, for there to be gratitude, beneficiaries must believe they are receiving something they did not earn, merit, or deserve. Being truly grateful extends beyond our own convenience. Gratitude also goes against our need to feel in control of our environment.

Have you ever known someone who is perpetual complaining? I remember when I said to a someone, "Hasn't this summer been great?" "Oh no, it's horrible - I hate the heat! I'm always sweating and the cost to run my air conditioner is killing me!" Then I commented to the same person, “Hasn’t this cooler weather been nice?” "Oh no, it's horrible - it's so cold. I just want to be outside and enjoy warmer weather."

Can you believe that? Have you ever noticed how ingratitude will turn even a blessing into a burden? How it makes opportunities feel like obligations? But thanksgiving is the key to freedom. 

It reminds us of our God who has already gone ahead of us to clear the way and make open the path to freedom and life. Becoming more thankful means learning to reinterpret the situations in our lives with the fundamental confession that we don't deserve anything.

Gratitude grows with humility.

Gratitude always involves a posture of humility. When you believe you deserve the good things you receive, you don’t feel the need to be grateful to others. If I believe I am owed something, I will not be thankful for it because I think I'm entitled to it. As Steven Furtick said, "When entitlement is high, gratitude is low. When gratitude is high, entitlement is low. Gratitude begins where our sense of entitlement ends."

So often we think we'll be more grateful when I get that job, buy my dream home, when I finish school, when my troubles disappear. Why do people who keep getting more and more, show less and less gratitude? My sinful mind can convince me I'm entitled to ______, I deserve it and if I don't get it other people must be rude to me.

The Apostle Paul wrote, "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile." They perceived themselves to be entitled, to be owed. They didn't see themselves as grateful receivers of grace every moment and grace is never earned or deserved.

Gratitude comes with imperfection
If we look, wait and hope for perfect people and perfect circumstances we’ll never be grateful. We'll miss out on God's desire for our lives. We're glad for our friends, for our homes, our cars, for success when it comes our way, for our jobs if we have them, but their absence does not prevent us from being grateful, especially for God's greatest gift.

So above all, Jesus followers, having much or very little thank God for his gift of Jesus: his matchless life, his unrivaled teachings, his sacrificial death, his triumphant resurrection. "Thank you Lord, Blessed are you, O Lord."

Is That All There Is To Thanksgiving?

Is Thanksgiving more than a day off, a parade, football and a meal that takes hours to prepare and few minutes to eat? Can it be more than that?

In the fall of 1621 just over 50 colonists attended the meal that became Thanksgiving including 22 men, four married women and more than 25 children and teenagers. These were the fortunate ones who had made it through the rough voyage across the Atlantic into the New World. They made it through the extreme harsh winter during which disease took the lives of nearly half the original group.

The majority of the women who had arrived on the Mayflower had died during the first winter. For the English the first Thanksgiving was celebrating that they had survived their first year in New England. The Plymouth colonists were likely outnumbered more than two-to-one at the event by their Native American guests.

While the 1621 event may not have been called Thanksgiving, thanksgiving was certainly present in that historic celebration, just as it would play a defining role in how the tradition developed over the centuries.  

Like the original colonist few have understood the power of giving thanks as thoroughly as Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and novelist. Here’s what Wiesel said on the Oprah Winfrey show:

OPRAH: “There may be no better person than you to speak about living with gratitude. Despite all the tragedy you've witnessed, do you still have a place inside you for gratefulness?”

ELIE: “Absolutely. Right after the war, I went around telling people, "Thank you just for living, for being human." And to this day, the words that come most frequently from my lips are, "Thank you." When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”

We hear a lot about being thankful, but living a life of gratitude isn’t easy. It requires time, effort and faithful practice.

“Without effort, feelings of gratitude are often fleeting, passing as quickly as they come. For example, I’m grateful to have a clean bill of health but gripe as soon as a cold interferes with my busy life. I have a kitchen filled with food but complain about cooking and closet filled with clothes but, “nothing to wear.”                                                                                                                                 Tiffany Musik Matthews 

Gratitude takes a conscious effort. In order to be grateful, we must first take the time to recognize that something has been done for our benefit. The culture’s prevalent attitude, ‘of what have you done for me lately,’ reflects expectation not gratitude.

Gratitude is reflected in acts of kindness and generosity and is an indicator that something good has taken place. Is there a difference between experiencing a warm, fuzzy feeling from time to time and living a life of gratitude? Dr. Robert Emmons, Professor of psychology at UC Davis says,

“Feeling grateful is not the same as being a grateful person, a grateful person is one who regularly affirms the goodness in his or her life and recognizes that the sources of this goodness lie at least partially outside of themselves.” Notice that Emmons says outside ourselves, not from us or because of us.

Those with a grateful heart feel more intensely grateful, on a regular basis, for multiple things, toward multiple people. While being grateful for positive events or moments of good fortune seems simple, but having a disposition toward gratitude suggests something more. For a Christ follower a grateful heart is being thankful for salvation and for God’s blessings, but it is also able to be grateful in difficult circumstances.

Being truly grateful extends beyond convenience. As receivers of salvation and divine grace, we should strive to be grateful in all seasons of our lives. Titus 3:4-5. The evidence is clear that cultivating gratitude in our lives makes us happier and healthier people, but practicing gratitude is easier said than done. 

We can all find reasons to be grateful, but unfortunately it’s more difficult to be appreciative of others. Kelsy Richardson, who is currently conducting graduate research on gratitude at Fuller Seminary, named pride as a major deterrent to gratitude said, “You would think that the opposite of being grateful is being ungrateful, but it’s actually selfishness or self-conceit. When you believe you deserve the good things you receive, you don’t feel the need to be grateful to others.”

In today’s age of entitlement many are mistaken to think that all social problems, economic insecurity, poverty, racism and even their own discomfort will end today or tomorrow. Many have come to expect that their lives should have less discomfort, but we are not God and cannot guarantee what we desire. Gratitude also goes against our need to feel in control of our environment. “Sometimes with gratitude you just have to accept life as it is and be grateful for what you have,” says Emmons.

In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy. Brother David Steindl-Rast