Happy Thanksgiving!
Good Morning Friends,
The typical American family, if it ever lived anywhere was on Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving canvas but if you look at that bird on that table it was skinny. It needed the help of all the fixings. The melancholy reality is that today for many, we have an overabundance that does not require us to depend on sharing. Like today’s overstuffed paper, the reality is that we live in a world of greed and commercialism that is driving us back to work on Monday. Still Thanksgiving is a day made by God like all the rest but one for which we should be especially thankful for there are important lesson to learn in it. So today eat lots of turkey with gravy and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie with whipped cream and then go out shopping or serve meals to the disadvantaged or watch parades and football games and take a nap, but whatever you do please know that God is to be in it if one hopes to have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Scripture: as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 5:19-20 (NRSV)
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord is God. It is he that 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, bless his name. For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.
Psalm 100 (NRSV)
Message: Religion, if it is anything at all, is about a way of life and the spirit of it is the way of living. It all kind of comes home on Thanksgiving. Here we get a snapshot of life. Of course the nature of Thanksgiving has changed because the nature of
the family has changed. The concept of the ideal family has changed from the image of Rockwell. Comedian George Burns captured the truth of it when he said, perhaps even thinking about Thanksgiving, that “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” Oh, family is still Love! Kids! Mom! Dinner! But the effective role of dad in the mix has changed. He is no longer the sole breadwinner typically and frankly too many dads are in jail….too many families divorced…too many families sinking into their overabundance and brokenness. Still family, in whatever state it is in, is the backbone of how we live. It means almost everything, and sometimes too many things. It can become a heavy weight. The sad thing is that maybe our families are getting to be a lot like those turkeys we eat…overweight or like a turducken, stuffed with a blended family of birds and deboned of internal structure. Friends, the average weight for American produced turkey crossed 30 pounds for the first time this year. In 1960, the average weight of a turkey was just 16.83 pounds. Even in 1985, it was only 20 pounds, and we didn’t hit 25 pounds until 1999. That’s a remarkable increase in average size. The frightening thing is that we owe most of it to antibiotics and artificial insemination. The modern bird is too heavy and misshapen to procreate the old fashioned. The change in birds like the change in families has occurred over time and is still changing. I pray the family does not meet the same fate as turkeys.
Pray we rejoice in the source of our thanksgiving. Pray for those where the temple of the family no longer exists that they realize that God is everywhere. Pray this Thanksgiving that God is with us every moment of our lives. Pray that God not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. Pray we give God thanks because God is the source of our thanksgiving.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 