A Month of Thanks

October is waning and the colors of the trees are quickly being relegated to being the colors of the ground; November is fast approaching.  With November comes one of my favorite holidays: Thanksgiving.

I really love Thanksgiving.  Christmas and Easter have much more meaning and much better meanings, but Thanksgiving occupies a warm spot in my heart.  Thanksgiving itself is a day of eating with people I love with no gifts, few distractions and many conversations.

Another reason I love Thanksgiving is that I love the feeling of being thankful.  I love how I feel when I am appreciative.  In past Novembers I have done and I have seen others do a daily list of things for which to be thankful.  This is an excellent exercise that helps cultivate thankfulness.  But this November I suggest trying something else.

This November will be a month of thanksgiving.

If you are a Christian I assume that you want a thankful heart toward your Savior.  If you are a Christian you want to be perpetually thankful to God for what He has done, and you should want this.  But how can we be thankful to the God we cannot see when we've ungrateful toward people that we can see?

"If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar.  For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, who he has not seen." 1 John 4:20

As Les Misérables says, "To love another person is to see the face of God."

Well, to be thankful to God, whom we cannot see, is difficult to do if we cannot be thankful toward people, who we can see.  To be thankful to another person is a way to be thankful to the God who made them and put them exactly where He wanted them to be in that given moment.

I think of the "Unforgiving Debtor" parable in Matthew 18.  We've got much for which to be thankful.  When we allow little inconveniences to keep us from being grateful to those around us it screams that we don't really appreciate the great, glorious reasons we have to be thankful for from God.  When we aren't grateful to the people around us it is because we forget to see the very image of our great God written on their faces and we forget the sovereign power of God that blesses us through His creations.

So, how thankful are you toward your wife or husband?  Your waitresses or waiter?  Your clerks?  Your postman or woman?  How have you shown them your gratitude?

November will be a month of thanksgiving. 

How will you show it to the people God has placed around you, many of whom are literally serving you?  Are you going to flash a big smile?  Are you going to leave a gift in the mailbox?  Are you going to (I know, this is a pretty radical idea) say "Thank you"?  I'm not asking for anything radical.  What I'm proposing is a month of a concerted effort to be conscience to the fact that you need to be thankful to so many people and then acting on that in a multitude of very small ways.  Smiles and "Thank yous" will cost you nothing, but I guarantee they will richly reward your soul and theirs.

November is fast approaching.  Will you join me in making November a month of thanks?  If so, think of how you will do this today.