Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By PASTOR JASON GREEN / Mineral Springs Baptist Church 

Well, to November! It seems as if 2021 has flown by. We are two thirds through college football season. High school football playoffs are beginning. Halloween has raced past us, and now, we turn our attention toward Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

I love Thanksgiving. Some of my fondest memories growing up was the smell of Barbara and Eldon’s house, my home, on Thanksgiving morning. I remember waking up and watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, then usually heading out to cut fire wood for a couple of hours before sitting down for the traditional meal. My mother’s chicken and dressing is legendary. And no, your mom’s or grandmom’s is not as good as Barbara Green’s, no matter what you may think.

There’s the annual Westminster Dog Show, NFL games and Hallmark Channel Christmas movies to watch after lunch (or during). Then, there’s leftovers, those glorious leftovers.

If we are not careful, we will turn Thanksgiving into this wonderful, food-filled, family-oriented day of celebration. That sounds like a good thing, though, doesn’t it? But my issue is not the significance of the day, but the condition of our hearts that lead us into the day.

Thanksgiving is a day set aside for us to collectively celebrate the providential hand of God having reached from heaven into this world to provide his greatest creation blessings. And we are blessed. Knowing we are blessed should lead us far past a day of celebrating being thankful and into a thankful lifestyle.

This thankful life will lead us to be far more gracious, far more merciful, far more affectionate, far more loyal and far more willing to give and serve. This lifestyle would turn us into a daily reminder for those around us just how good God really is. As he blesses us and we are thankful, that thankfulness leads us to tell people just how great our Lord is. A thankful lifestyle can become the greatest conveyance of the Gospel — changed lives rooted in thankfulness expressing their reason for being thankful. How could that not put the best of our Lord on display?

Let’s try it for the month, shall we. Every day, instead of eyeballing a Thursday toward the end of the month as the day of celebration, let’s be thankful moment by moment for what God has done for us and in us and celebrate that through life-giving joy being shared daily with those around us. That’s what real thankfulness should look like.