We are officially in the holiday season. Maybe not the holiday spirit but the season. I love this time of year from September through December. The temperatures start to cool, and the leaves start to turn, and a renewal takes place within me. Maybe it has something to do with my birth having taken place in November. I think each of us has a time for renewal. This thinking about renewal and cooler temperatures and the like brought me to the first real holiday of the season.

My thoughts turned to Thanksgiving. It is an American holiday and kicks off the Christmas rush.   While the Thanksgiving holiday is unique to America; thanksgiving is not. As we enter the holidays, I want to look at ways we can enter the end of the year with a spirit of thankfulness. There are three ways we can approach the holidays with thankfulness based on Psalm 118: 1

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; For His Mercy is everlasting.

The first of these is simply “give thanks to the Lord.” The world today has so many distracting views. I want to be clear that our worship and thanks are to the Lord Creator of Heaven and Earth. There is no other. He is the God who created the Garden of Eden, who made man in His image, who made them male and female, who told Noah to build the Ark, who called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees and changed his name to Abraham. He is the God who promised to build Abraham into a great nation, who called a man Moses to lead his people out of Egypt with signs and wonders.  He is God and He alone is God. He sent his only Son to be born of a virgin to live among men as a man to die on a cross for our sins and rise from the grave three days later that we might have eternal life. We have much to give thanks for if this is all we have. Yet it is not.

Look into your life and the life of your family to see where you are and where he brought you from. Life is not perfect. There are trials and hard times. You may be in a trial or hard place now. Give thanks to the Lord. Yes, even in the middle of that trial. It will not make the trial or hardship disappear but might make it easier to bear. Maybe it is time to surrender yourself to the Lord. Maybe he has been calling you and you have been resistant. Now is the time to surrender to Him. He is good. Give thanks to the Lord.

The second part we can meditate on this holiday season is: “For he is good.”  Last week in “He Leadeth Me” I referenced Paul and how he learned contentment. We may not always have the best of everything. Our clothes may not have designer tags; we don’t dine in 5-star restaurants or live in a mansion. Yet most of us have food to eat, clothes to wear and some sort of roof over our heads. We can say he is good. We have breath in our lungs. We can see where he has brought us from and where we are now, and we know he is good. We can see the times he has spared our lives. We know the times he kept us from danger. We are aware of the ways he has led us. We know he has called us from darkness to light. We know he is good. His deeds proclaim his goodness. His acts throughout history declare that he is a good God. He does not treat us as our sins deserve.

Consider the planet. It spins at just the correct speed to keep us alive and flourishing. Any faster or slower and we would be dead. The earth and moon are in gravity pull. The moon’s pull affects the tide of the ocean. God holds all these things in balance and reveals his goodness.

Our body is another example of his goodness. Our body is an amazing organism. We have a responsibility to take care of the body we have. This means trying to eat right and getting some exercise. We need to take a hard look at the things we put into our bodies. We give thanks to the Lord by the way we treat what He has given us; this includes our body. When we put good food and water in our bodies, we are nourished and healthy.  We could not exist without God who created us in His image and gave us our body and life and food to sustain us and keep us healthy. He is good indeed. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.

The last of the three for us to meditate on as we enter the holidays is to remember that his mercy is everlasting. Praise be to the Lord that his mercy is everlasting. Were it not for his mercy, we would be consumed in our guilt. Because of his mercy, he does not treat us as our sins deserve. He has redeemed us and given us a hope and a future. He is patient with us, not wanting us to perish. He has delayed the return of Jesus these 2000 years to give us a chance to know him as God and to accept him as Savior. He is merciful when we do not deserve mercy.  And his mercy is not just for today or tomorrow or for those who lived in the past. His mercy is everlasting. His mercy is forever. It is eternal. This thought gives us reason to rejoice and abound with thankfulness.  Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his mercy is everlasting,

As we get further into the holiday season and the busyness grows, may we take a few moments here at the beginning to remember and reflect on these three ways to be thankful this year. After all, the reason we even have Thanksgiving and Christmas is because of Him. It is more than Pilgrims and Indians; it is more than turkey and all the trimmings. It is about him and his goodness, and his mercy. Let’s be sure to celebrate our Savior this season. When we do, we will find many reasons to…

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; For His Mercy is everlasting.

Angela

I would love to hear from you. Be sure to leave a comment below and let me know what you are thankful for this season. Also be sure to like and subscribe so you won’t miss new content when it drops.