Some Personal Thanksgiving Thoughts

My first reaction to Thanksgiving, of course, is what should be every Christian’s - namely to be grateful foremost for my salvation in Christ and the peace and security that brings. If we have nothing in this world other than that, we are infinitely, and eternally, blessed. And of course, for me, there are the added gifts of a godly wife, wonderful family, and being in full-time ministry here and elsewhere.

But my second thought is about something the Lord led me to do this past Friday night while giving a short devotional at church to the youth group. We had just served them a Thanksgiving turkey dinner and then I gathered them together just before the dessert. I picked a great kid whose name was Jordan. He’s twelve. And I asked him to detail everything he had done since the moment he opened his eyes that morning. I would let him proceed with a few things and then interrupt by saying something like this: “So you first awakened and got up from a warm comfortable bed, in a beautiful safe home with loving parents down the hall?” Of course he said Yes. I then said, “You know that even opening your eyes is a gift because we have two people in our church who are blind and others in such great pain that they can barely walk”.

Then I asked him for his next moves, which included getting dressed, eating breakfast and heading out to school, etc. So again, I asked, “How many sets of clothes and shoes did you have to pick from? “ His answer, after laughing, was, “You don’t even want to know”. I followed again saying, “And while you then tried to decide what to eat, for the first of your 3+ meals that day, there are millions of kids who will never learn to read or write, and who wake up every single day cold, hungry, and scared - some starving to death as we speak.” Next I asked him, “Did you then jump into a nice new warm car, get driven to the front door of a nice safe school, where you have friends and get a quality education?” ‘’That’s right,’ he said - although I’m not sure how much he was thankful for being sent to school?

But to make a long story short, we eventually got into Jordan’s evening hours where he described his typical life, including sports, friends, computer games, cell phones, and all of the things that characterize most of America’s youth culture today – not to mention us all sitting there in a beautiful church, with Christian friends, and programs designed for their fun and spiritual edification. I think the kids finally began to get where I was headed.

We eventiually ended up with him going back to sleep and getting ready to do it all over again. But all of that to say that, as I spoke about spiritual things to others, I typically turned back the applicatiob on myself. I again realized that all the daily so-called ‘little things’, we never much think about are all great blessings from God’s hand. They are not just our ‘birth rights’ as Americans, as we often treat them.

To wrap up, I asked the kids to compare their lives to those we were exposed to in our missions conference a few weeks earlier – children who have been kiddnapped as child soldiers in Uganda. Or 9-10-year old girls sold into slavery and prostition by their own familes in Cambodia. And there were the street boys of Lima, Peru, who live on drugs in scavenging through dumps, and just trying to squeak out another painful day of survival.

I don’t know what impact I had on the kids that night. Hopefully some. But I know what it did for me as I reconsidered my many blessings – even apart from having the priceless possesion of forgiveness of my sin, along with a personal reationship with the Creator God who granted it!

“In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thess 5:17-18)

Bill Breckenridge

If you enjoy these entries please e-mail us and let us know. Thanks and God bless!