Thank God

I pray your celebration of thanks was peaceful and meaningful. We have so much to be thankful for in this country. As a spoiled people wanting it all right now it’s a shame to see a great tradition beginning to fade like a sunset. The metaphor “Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we (used to) go…” for an annual family gathering had meaning and some reverence to it in my younger years. There were no businesses open and if you forgot to gas up the car on Wednesday you weren’t going far Thanksgiving Day. One doesn’t have to worry about that nowadays. Some people in fact skip the whole thanks day in exchange for an up front place in line at Suzy Q’s What-cha-ma-call-it Emporium for a chance at snagging the newest, biggest, greatest ever, one of a kind, on sale, limited amount of purple widget’s, by camping over night at the front door and getting into the store before anyone else. Triumphantly returning home with bragging rights and the spoils of life is always far better than humbling one’s self before the One who so lavishly gives us all we possess; right?

[Psalm 100; Psalm 136] I fear because we have such a comfortable lifestyle in this part of the world we fail to observe the greatness of our Creator and the free gifts he has surrounded us with. The very air we breathe, the water we drink, the complex and elaborate environment and eco-system we live in, is all maintained just for our existence. Our relationship, man and Creator, has become a tradition being observed by less and less people every day because they believe more in themselves than the One who gave them life. The late Dr. Louie Talbot once told of a visit to the gigantic Niagara Falls on the border of Canada and the United States. Talbot just stood there awestruck as the millions and millions of gallons of water poured over the cliffs into that great abyss of roaring, turbulent water below. Then Talbot noticed that when the falling cascades of water hit the debts below, the turbulence created a spray which rose in the form of a mist, higher and higher until it reached the top of the falls. As he observed the magnificent phenomenon, Talbot thought, “Why, that mist coming up is just a picture of worship.” Describing the experience he wrote, “Those millions of gallons of water, pouring and pouring and pouring down upon that open abyss showed something of the river of God’s grace - all of His goodness and all His mercy being poured down on mankind.” Talbot’s picture of the rising mist represented the praise and thanksgiving of God’s people in response to the cascading ocean of grace, represented by the waterfall, is an excellent metaphor of the way our man and Creator relationship ought to function. Praise and thanksgiving as a response to what God has done for us should be like the mist that rises from the turbulence of Niagara’s waterfall. Grace describes what God has done for mankind and a generation of men and women today need to discover that in all of the wisdom of the world there is nothing that parallels this marvelous act of God toward an undeserving people. “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). “Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever (Psalm 100:3-5). God bless you, always.