Chances are you’re shopping for Christmas. Some places started Black Friday sales weeks ago. Christmas is still one month away, yet the consuming focus will be on buying things in spite of inflation & dire economic forecasts. But how are we doing being thankful for what we already have?
We are living through a difficult time as a nation, and you may be experiencing hardships personally. But it’s nowhere near what our ancestors went through. Thanksgiving was a day when our ancestors gave thanks to God for protecting them through the struggles of living in a new frontier. It was not a time of prosperity, but of deprivation & death. But they recognized that God was with them, helped them, & provided for them. So they were grateful.
A thankful spirit is one of the key distinguishing marks of a Christian. It sets us apart from the world. In 21st-century America, we live in an entitlement culture. We have so much wealth as a society that we tend to take for granted the necessities of life. Many believe we have a right to a job with a certain income level, to health care, to an education, to housing-not just as desirable things, but deserved things! We tend to view all of this abundance as simply our birthright, what is rightfully ours! In nearby Detroit, officials are moving toward making water a right-that is, if you don’t pay your water bills, the water company still must give it to you free (well, actually others who do pay just have to pay more to subsidize those who don’t). When something becomes a “right” someone else has to be forced to provide it. There’s a huge difference between having the right to obtain something, & the right to be provided it.
Someone writing in “Christianity Today” magazine many years ago said:
“Shall I thank God at this Thanksgiving? Why was I born at this particular time in the history of the world? Why was I born in a spotless delivery room in an American hospital instead of a steaming shelter in the dank jungle of the Amazon or a mud hut in Africa? Why did I have the privilege of going to school with capable instructors while millions around the world, without a school book, sit or squat on a dirt floor listening to a missionary?
“How does it happen that my children are tucked into warm beds at night with clean white sheets while millions of babies in the world will lie in cold rooms, many in their own filth and vomit? Why can I sit down to a warm meal whenever I want to and eat too much when millions will know all of their lives the gnawing pangs of hunger? Do I deserve to share in such wealth? Why me and not other millions? Why was I born in a land I didn’t build, in a prosperity that I didn’t create and enjoy a freedom that I didn’t establish? Why an American sitting comfortably in my own living room this Thanksgiving rather than an Indian squatting in the dark corner of some infested alley in Calcutta, shivering in the cold, or a Cambodian in the rubble of what used to be my home, or a terrified, running Nicaraguan in the jungle? Do I deserve it? By what right do I have it?”
A few weeks ago, we recognized the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. As I see stories of believers living & worshipping together in spare, squalid conditions–& doing so joyfully–it jolts me into seeing how truly spoiled we are. To be “spoiled” isn’t just to have a lot–it’s to be given so much that you take it for granted & still whine about what you don’t have.
When we don’t see all these things as blessings from a loving & gracious heavenly Father, it dulls our sense of gratitude. It seems the more we have, the less we seem to appreciate it. And now to say “Thank God” has become almost a profanity, a taking of God’s name in vain–using it mindlessly, flippantly, sarcastically.
So hopefully, we’ll have our hearts in the right place this holiday season, not focusing on materialism, but on what matters most. Does your praying reflect a thankful spirit or an entitlement mindset? Does God hear more of our thanks or our complaints? “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6).