THANKFULNESS
I’m a Christian, but sometimes I forget to thank God for the things that haven’t happened. Not this year. I’m grateful for the accidents I wasn’t involved in, the illnesses that never developed, and the times I could have been mugged, but wasn’t. I’m thankful my house didn’t burn down when I left the iron on for five hours. I’m thankful that when we left the garage door up all night, nothing was taken. Sometimes I forget to thank God for electricity, but this Thanksgiving I’ll make a point of it. I’m also thankful for indoor plumbing, anesthetics … Ever since my daughter nearly sheared her fingertip in the bathroom door, I’m thankful for every uneventful day. I’m thankful for my small son’s paraphrase of Psalm 100: “Enter into His gates on Thanksgiving.” I’m glad I have Someone to thank.
—Jessica Shaver
Thanks to God for my Redeemer,
Thanks for all Thou dost provide!
Thanks for times not but a mem’ry,
Thanks for Jesus by my side!
Thanks for pleasant, balmy springtime,
Thanks for dark and dreary fall!
Thanks for tears by now forgotten,
Thanks for peace within my soul!
Thanks for prayers that Thou hast answered,
Thanks for what Thou does deny!
Thanks for storms that I have weathered,
Thanks for all Thou dost supply!
Thanks for pain, and thanks for pleasure,
Thanks for comfort in despair!
Thanks for grace that none can measure,
Thanks for love beyond compare!
Thanks for roses by the wayside,
Thanks for thorns their stems contain!
Thanks for home and thanks for fireside,
Thanks for hope, that sweet refrain!
Thanks for joy and thanks for sorrow,
Thanks for heavenly peace with Thee!
Thanks for hope in the tomorrow,
Thanks thro’ all eternity!
—Swedish hymn
A four-year-old boy said he was thankful for his glasses. “Why?” someone asked him. “Because it keeps the boys from hitting me—and the girls from kissing me.”
One day on the streets of London Charles H. Spurgeon was robbed. When he arrived home and told his tale, he said, “Well, thank the Lord anyway.”
His wife countered, “Thank the Lord that somebody stole your money?”
“No, my dear,” answered her husband. Then he began to enumerate some reasons why he was thankful. “First, I’m thankful the robber just took my money, not my life. Secondly, I’m thankful I had left most of our money home and he didn’t really rob me of much. Thirdly, I’m thankful to God that I was not the robber.”
O precious Father, as we bow
Before Thy throne today—
We count the many blessings
Thou hast showered on our way.
The comfort of our humble homes,
Our health and happiness,
The strength provided for each day
To meet the strain and stress.
We thank Thee for thy precious Son
Who brought salvation free,
And for this mighty land of ours—
A land of liberty!
So Lord, help us give Thee thanks
For all that we hold dear—
Not only on Thanksgiving Day,
But each day of the year!
The words “Think and Thank” are inscribed in many of the Cromwellian churches in England.
As two men were walking through a field one day, they spotted an enraged bull. Instantly they darted toward the nearest fence. The storming bull followed in hot pursuit, and it was soon apparent they wouldn’t make it. Terrified, the one shouted to the other, “Put up a prayer, John. We’re in for it!” John answered, “ ‘I can’t. I’ve never made a public prayer in my life.” “But you must now!” implored his companion. “The bull is catching up to us.” “All right,” panted John, “I’ll say the only prayer I know, the one my father used to repeat at the table: ‘O Lord, for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful.’ ”
In old Anglo-Saxon, to be “thankful” meant to be “thinkful.” Thinking of one’s blessings should stir one to gratitude.
A man was walking home with his sack lunch. His shoelace came untied and he stooped over and put his sack down on the sidewalk. A dog came along and ran off with his lunch. The man replied, “Thank God, I still have my appetite.”
I hate ingratitude more in man than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, or any taint of voice, whose strong corruption inhabits our frail blood.
—Shakespeare
O Thou who hast given us so much, mercifully grant us one more thing—a grateful heart.
—George Herbert
Mark Tidd of Webster, New York, describes an experience from his college days. “An old man showed up at the back door of the house we were renting. Opening the door a few cautious inches, we saw his eyes were glassy and his furrowed face glistened with silver stubble. He clutched a wicker basket holding a few unappealing vegetables. He bid us a good morning and offered his produce for sale. We were uneasy enough that we made a quick purchase to alleviate both our pity and our fear.
“To our chagrin, he returned the next week, introducing himself as Mr. Roth, the man who lived in the shack down the road. As our fears subsided, we got close enough to realize it wasn’t alcohol but cataracts that marbleized his eyes. On subsequent visits, he would shuffle in, wearing two mismatched right shoes, and pull out a harmonica. With glazed eyes set on future glory, he’d puff out old gospel tunes between conversations about vegetables and religion.
“On one visit, he exclaimed, ‘The Lord is so good! I came out of my shack this morning and found a bag full of shoes and clothing on my porch.’
‘That’s wonderful, Mr. Roth!’ we said. ‘We’re so happy for you.’
‘You know what’s even more wonderful?’ he asked. ‘Just yesterday I met some people who could use them.’ ”
—Leadership journal
There is a legend of a man who found the barn where Satan kept his seeds ready to be sown in the human heart, and on finding the seeds of discouragement more numerous than others, learned that those seeds could be made to grow almost anywhere. When Satan was questioned he reluctantly admitted that there was one place in which he could never get them to thrive. “And where is that?” asked the man. Satan replied sadly, “In the heart of a grateful man.”
If anyone would tell you the shortest, surest way to happiness and all perfection, he must tell you to make it a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you. For it is certain that whatever seeming calamity happens to you, if you thank and praise God for it, you turn it into a blessing.
—William Law
A missionary in China was living a defeated life. Everything seemed to be touched with sadness, and although he prayed for months for victory over depression and discouragement, his condition remained the same. He finally determined to leave his work and go to an interior station where he could pray and seek victory over his morbid state. When he reached the new place, he was entertained in the home of a fellow missionary. The first thing he saw on the wall was a motto which read, “Try thanksgiving!” The words gripped his heart and he thought within himself, “Have I been praying all this time and not praising?” He stopped and began to give thanks, and immediately his heart was uplifted.
A good king in Spain known as Alfonso XIX learned that the boys who served in his court were forgetting to pray before their meals. So he decided to teach them a lesson. He gave a banquet and invited them to attend. Midway through the dinner a ragged beggar came in, sat down, and began eating ravenously. When he was finished, he went out without saying a word. “That ungrateful wretch ought to be whipped,” shouted the boys. “He ate the king’s food and never showed gratitude.” Quietly the king rose to his feet, and silence fell over the group. “Daily you have taken the rich blessings of life from the hand of your heavenly Father,” said the king. “You’ve enjoyed His sunshine, breathed His air, eaten His food He has provided, and you have not bothered to say ‘thank you’ for any of them. You are more ungrateful than that beggar.”
—Our Daily Bread
Tom Hale, longtime missionary doctor to Nepal, says in his book Don’t Let the Goats Eat the Loquat Trees: “The concept of disinterested love is totally foreign to Nepalis because their primary motive for good works is to acquire merit that will benefit them in the next life. Most of our patients have no sense of gratitude for our services; instead, they expect that we be grateful to them for providing us an opportunity to gain merit for ourselves. This is why ‘Thank you’ is so rarely heard in Nepal; in fact, the Nepali language has no word for it. It’s just as well. We wouldn’t last long here if we had come to receive thanks.”
Mission worker Sam Hadley said, “The night I was converted, I went out and looked up at stars and thanked God for their beauty. I had not seen them for ten years. A drunkard never looks up.”
In a sermon at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, Gary Wilburn said, “In 1636, amid the darkness of the Thirty Years War, a German pastor, Martin Rinkart, is said to have buried five thousand of his parishioners in one year, an average of fifteen a day. His parish was ravaged by war, death, and economic disaster. In the heart of that darkness, with the cries of fear outside his window, he sat down and wrote this table grace for his children:
“Now thank we all our God
With hearts and hands and voices
Who wonderous things hath done
In whom His world rejoices
Who, from our mother’s arms
Hath led us on our way
With countless gifts of love
And still is ours today.”
Scottish minister Alexander Whyte was known for his uplifting prayers in the pulpit. He always found something for which to be grateful. One Sunday morning the weather was so gloomy that one church member thought to himself, “Certainly the preacher won’t think of anything for which to thank God on a wretched day like this.” Much to his surprise, however, Whyte began by praying, ‘We thank Thee, O God, that it is not always like this.”
THANKSGIVING DAY
This proclamation was made by Governor Bradford in 1623, three years after the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth:
To all ye Pilgrims:
Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the raids of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience; now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November ye 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three, and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Plymouth Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.
President George Washington made this national Thanksgiving proclamation in 1789:
Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection, aid, and favors …
Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of the United States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the benefient Author of all the good that was, and is, or that will be; that we may all then unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country, and for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.
How to Observe Thanksgiving
Count your blessings instead of crosses;
Count your gain instead of losses.
Count your joys instead of woes;
Count your friends instead of foes.
Count your smiles instead of tears;
Count your courage instead of fears.
Count your full years instead of lean;
Count your kind deeds instead of mean.
Count your health instead of wealth;
Count on God instead of yourself!
THINKING
To act is easy; to think is hard.
—Johann von Goethe
You are what you think—not what you think you are.
Think as a man who acts, and act as a man who thinks.
The most important things in life are the thoughts you choose to frame.
—Marcus Aurelius
Life is simply a matter of concentration: you are what you set out to be. You are a composite of the things you say, the books you read, the thoughts you think, the company you keep, and the things you desire to become.
—B. C. Forbes
Use your brains; it’s the little things in life that count.
What we think about when we are free to think about what we will—that is what we are or soon will become.
—A. W. Tozer
The happiness of your life depends on the character of your thoughts.
—Marcus Aurelius
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.
—Henry Ford
A person is what he thinks about all day.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
You are not what you think you are. What you think, you are.
Only 5 percent of the people think.
Only 15 percent think they think.
The other 80 percent would rather die than think.
—George Bernard Shaw