As the season of Thanksgiving rolls around once more, our thoughts turn quickly to the bland, the usual, the easy. Most of us consider ourselves to be thankful people. We can rattle off a list at a moment's notice: family, friends, home, freedom. Those things for which Thanksgiving costs us nothing.
But Scripture commands us to give thanks in everything, so this Thanksgiving, I challenge you to dig deeper. Open up your heart and let God root around in those private, dark places where the hurts and frustrations reign. Those areas we know can't be God's will for us: that rejection letter, that friend's betrayal, the bad medical report, the economy. How can we give thanks for something opposite of what we want?
Thanksgiving often requires sacrifice, but it is this very act of sacrificial thanks that pleases God. He knows you're thankful for the nice dinner and the healthy kids. Big deal! But what about the losses, the heartaches, the disappointments that keep you up at night? Can we bring "the sacrifice of praise" even when our life isn't bringing us the fulfillment we expected?
This season offers us the opportunity to offer back to God thanksgiving and praise for the things we despise about our lives. For only then can He begin to make something good out of them. Only then are we offering a thanksgiving that really means something.
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