Why Thanksgiving Was Never Meant to be a One-Day Holiday by Carol McLeod for Charisma News
Thanksgiving is perhaps the most classic and well-loved of all American celebrations. It holds the annual reminder that thankfulness is the appropriate and necessary response to all we have been given.
What a rare delight that people across the nation pause for a rare moment to speak forth words of heartfelt gratitude! I don’t know what your Thanksgiving table will look like this year, or who will be gathered around it, but would you allow me to barge in uninvited and share with you a few revelations that God has been sharing with me?
Thanksgiving is not a single day on the calendar. It was always meant to be a lifestyle; this amazing lifestyle is the unique and unmatched manner in which we are able to access the presence of the Father.
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“Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise” (Psalm 100:4).
Perhaps you, like me, will savor the paraphrase of Psalm 100 in the Message Bible:
“On your feet now—applaud God! Bring a gift of laughter, sing yourselves into his presence. Know this: God is God, and God, God. He made us; we didn’t make him. We’re his people, his well-tended sheep. Enter with the password: ‘Thank you!’ Make yourselves at home, talking praise. Thank him. Worship him.” (Psalm 100:1-4, MSG).
Thanksgiving was never meant to be an annual celebration identified by pilgrims, pies, football and stuffing, rather it was intended to be the most accurate demonstration of an intimate relationship between humanity and their heavenly, generous Father. The only possible response is, “Thanks, Dad!”
And we must not wait for a month, or a day on a calendar to provoke this heartfelt thanksgiving!
Thanks-speaking is the language of the Father’s family. We don’t speak with words of complaining, in the tongue of lack or with the accent of griping. We are to be thanks-speakers every day of every year:
