Thankful for Mercy - Look to the Star

I wonder if there are someday we feel as though we don’t have enough? Is our God holding out on us? Look around you. Are there people who have more than you? Is that fair? I think that all of us learn at an early age that life isn’t fair. Nowhere in Scripture has God promised to make it fair. On Thanksgiving I think it can be helpful to us to think about not what we don’t have, but what our God in love has taken away?

Is your health missing? Has God removed stuff or things that you once held dear? Why are we considering all that God has taken away on Thanksgiving – a day when we are supposed to be counting our blessings?! Often it is when we miss something that God has given do we understand how good he is. Maybe we took that blessing for granted, but only now that God has taken it away, do we fully appreciate how much it meant to us.

Sometimes God restores those losses, but sometimes, as in the case of a loved one, we won’t have that blessing back in this life. In the account of the ten lepers, only one man returns to praise God for his goodness. God points out that of the ten men, this one you might give a pass to not returning because he wasn’t a Jew. He was a cultural alien and enemy, a Samaritan. It was wrong of the other nine to NOT return and give thanks to God.

The danger for us is that when we forget where our blessings come from, we can start to forget completely about our God. It is a slippery slope to think that we don’t need God because he really hasn’t given us anything anyway. This begs the question, where did the nine think their new, whole skin came from? A chance miraculous event? Or maybe worse, they knew that it was Jesus who cured them and they didn’t care. May God guard our hearts against apathy. May we return to God everyday the thanks that is due to him. If there is one thing that isn’t fair it’s that God would forgive our thanklessness. It wasn’t fair that Jesus took my place on the cross. I am thankful that because he did, heaven is mine.

This Thanksgiving spend less time thinking about what you don’t have and more time in peace and contentment with the blessings God has showered on you.