With Thanksgiving day looming largely over the horizon, we can’t help but reflect on the pilgrims who paved the way for the traditions we hold near and dear to our hearts. But the pilgrims weren’t the first ones to step foot on land with thankful hearts and joyous feasts. After over a year on the Ark, Noah and his family finally exited the massive boat and stepped on dry ground.

In Genesis 8:1 the Bible says, “But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark; and God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water subsided.”

There’s a special sense of significance in knowing we have never escaped the mind of God, but when you’ve been sealed in a boat for over a year, you can grow weary in the wait and lose sight of what God has called you to – what He has promised you. When the Word of God tells us that God remembered Noah, it is a sweet reminder that we may sometimes feel like God doesn’t see us us, or perhaps that He doesn’t care what we are going through, but you can rest in the promise of His abiding presence and His incessant love.

Noah was thankful that God had not forgotten that He had sent him and his family adrift. His heart of thankfulness gave way to worship and he began to sacrifice every sort of animal as a demonstration of his thankful and surrendered heart.

In chapter 9 we find God’s covenant with Noah and the generations that would come after him. Never again would the world be wiped out by a world-wide flood. The rainbow was the sign of His promise to never flood the world again. But I want you to note something very interesting about this wonderful passage of Scripture.

Genesis 9:16 says, “Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

For the first time, God’s promise came with a sign. He would form a rainbow as a perpetual sign to future generations that He would be merciful to a people whose heart have a tendency to be wicked. And not only would we see the sign, but He would see it as well – and it would remind Him of His own promise to the world. God’s mercy is certainly a beautiful reason to be thankful!

The next time you look at a rainbow, remember that your Heavenly Father is looking at it too – and He is remembering His promise to a wayward people. You may even want to cook your own Thanksgiving Dinner every time you see a rainbow peaking out somewhere between the sunshine and the clouds.

What promises has God made that you are thankful for today?

This has been a tough week for our Scripture Dig writers – loss and heartache abound, even as we look together at the topic of true gratitude. At times like these we must remember that thanksgiving is not an emotion. Giving thanks with grateful hearts is not something that is segregated to the “good” and easy times in our lives, when everyone is healthy, all our wants and needs are met, and everyone is at peace with one another. Truly, those blessings should inspire a heart of gratitude… but what about when we’re sitting in the ashes of life?

A couple of years ago I wrote this post, part of which still echoes in my head from time to time:

Watching and listening to people this time of year intrigues me. In the celebration of Thanksgiving, we set aside time to thank our Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, our Abba Father for all that He has blessed us with…

Even in our attempts to make this holiday more meaningful, it often seems to ring hollow. Go around the table and say what you are thankful for – “my family,” “my job,” “this house,” whatever. Not that it’s bad to be thankful for these things, but are we truly thankful people? What about the little things? What about the painful things? Are we thankful for those?

I wrote that post the day before Thanksgiving 2008. The next morning we found out that my mother-in-law was dying of cancer – you can read my next post here. Needless to say, that Thanksgiving was not a lighthearted romp through the hay with our handmade turkeys.

These last couple of years have been hard. In many ways that I cannot fully explain, life has been hard. I am tired of death. I am tired of evil. I am tired. Can you relate?

What will be shared at your Thanksgiving table this year? I do hope that you can thank God for health and your family and your job and your house. But what about when we can’t thank God for health because we or those we love are sick and dying? What about when we can’t thank God for our job because we don’t have one? What about when we can’t thank God for our house because it was foreclosed on? What about the painful things? Are we thankful even in the midst of these times?

True gratitude cannot be based on our circumstances. True gratitude must come from a deep rooted understanding of the grace and mercy of God. From seeing that He is all I really want, seeing that He is all I really need after all. From seeing that knowing God is the true treasure.

I am deeply grateful for my family, my house, my church, etc. But if all of those things are burned away and I am left sitting in the ashes, will I be grateful that neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation can separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus my Lord?

He is good. Even when life is not, He is good.

Image from http://www.freefoto.com

We saw the picture of Gratitude in the dust yesterday from Luke 17.  Today we’re looking in the same passage at a picture of leaving gratitude IN the dust.

• All ten sick men were desperate, begging for mercy from a safe distance.
• All ten sick men called Jesus “Master,” recognizing His power to heal.
• All ten sick men responded in obedience, turning to go to the priests, as Jesus instructed.
• All ten sick men were cleansed.

So what made the difference for the “other nine” who didn’t come back to give their thanks to their Healer?  Maybe the answer lies in the action verbs.  The one healed Samaritan saw he was healed and “turned back, praising God with a loud voice.” His healing prompted him to change course and pour his newly born energy into praise.  But the other nine?  The last we know of them is that “they went.”  It appears that as they were cleansed, they just kept going. We read that and shake our heads, with a “tsk, tsk, tsk.”

Ingratitude doesn’t stop.    Ingratitude gets what it came for and moves on.     Ingratitude has places to go and things to do that are too important to take time for being thankful.     It focuses on the “thing” received, instead of the Giver.

On Tuesday Kathy helped us understand that gratitude is “a response to a grace given; the acceptance of a kindness done with the acknowledgement that it was undeserved.”  The ungrateful nine didn’t respond. The ungrateful nine didn’t acknowledge that their healing was undeserved.

No one wants to be the “other nine.” When we receive God’s kindness daily, we choose whether or not to run off with our loot along with the nine or turn around with the one.  What makes the difference for us? Back to verbs, the key may be in what the one did that the nine did not:  “when he saw…”

Before the one responded with gratitude, we’re told “when he saw that he was healed…” he did what the crowd did not. The words here mean to observe and pay attention to something with the eyes, but the verb “saw” also means to “know” with understanding.  When he visibly saw his healed body, he knew the power of Jesus was the source of the change, the same Jesus he called out to for help. The verb tense indicates that it was as he was in the process of observing and knowing he had been healed that he turned around to give thanks.  We are so much better at calling out for help than turning around to give thanks.

While his priority was the Master healer, the priority of the majority was that they got what they wanted and ran off with it.

• I don’t deserve the good things I am given.
• God is the source of all good things.
• To omit gratitude is to misunderstand who I am and Who God is.

The other nine grieved the heart of God, but the one glorified Him.   To those diseased by sin and crying out for healing, God promises, “The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly, I will show the salvation of God!”  (Psalm 50:23)

If we want to be like the crowd, we can “take, run, and go.”    If we want to be like the one, we must “stop, turn, and drop.”

What is your greatest distraction to stopping, turning, and taking time to give thanks?

Yesterday, Kathy gave us a fascinating look at what “thanksgiving” really means. As a refresher from that post:

…the primary meaning of the root word translated in its various forms as “thanks” or “thanksgiving” in the Old Testament, is “to acknowledge or confess sin, God’s character and works, or man’s character.”…Based on the Old Testament understanding, the attitude of thanks we are familiar with is intertwined with confession and praise.

…The NT understanding of thanksgiving is a response to a grace given; the acceptance of a kindness done with the acknowledgement that it was undeserved.

Real thanksgiving is inextricably tied to humility as we confess our sin, acknowledge that we deserve nothing, and praise Him for His grace from a posture of lowliness. In Luke chapter 17, we encounter an unnamed man, a despised Samaritan, who understood what real gratitude meant.

Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”

When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed.

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”

Luke 17:11-19

Leprosy was a horrible disease. It gradually consumed and disfigured the victim’s entire physical being, interfering with pain receptors and causing the individual to be unaware of touching burning hot surfaces or even the bites of rodents. It didn’t stop with consuming the physical body – this disease also completely consumed all normalcy of life. The diagnosed leper was banned from the town, from their own spouse and children, and sent to live in a colony with others who shared their disease, watching those around them be consumed and eventually succumb to the fate that would eventually take their own lives.

It was with voices raspy with disease and heavily laden with emotion that these men cried out in desperation, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”

Jesus does have pity on them. Tomorrow we will look at the ingratitude of the other nine lepers, but today let us ponder the one who came back. Not only was this man a leper, he was also a Samaritan. An outcast among outcasts. The lowliest of the low.

Real thanksgiving is inextricably tied to humility. I think this man was the one who came back because he understood just how undeserving he was, just how unlikely it was that this famous Jewish Rabbi would look him in the eye, take pity on him, and restore his life. His lowliness caused him to more fully recognize Jesus’ greatness and prompted him to fall on his face in humble thanksgiving.

We will not give Him the thanksgiving He is due until we recognize how truly lowly we are. True thanksgiving rises from the dust at Jesus’ feet.  As we consider how to offer Him thanksgiving from our own hearts, we must go lower. Lower into the dust to see how great and worthy He truly is, how desperate and needy we are, how unlikely it is that He would see us and love us as we are. What wondrous love is this!

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.”

Hebrews 12:28-29

We humans have to work hard at being thankful. When we give something to our toddlers we prompt, “Now what do you say?” Worse yet, when those toddlers become adolescents, we parents still have to say, “Did you forget something?” Only to hear the reply, “oh yeah, thhaaannnkkss.” (Can’t you just hear the attitude?)

Unfortunately, we don’t get a whole lot better as adults. Sincere, unsolicited gratitude as a natural response to a kindness given can be rare. Yet, this is the very picture Scripture paints of the thankful attitude God expects of His children.

If we want to please God, we need to be thankful. But what does that look like? What does God mean when His Word says things like:

• Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving Psalm 147:7
• …always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 5:20
• Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving presents your requests to God. Philippians 4:6

According to the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, the primary meaning of the root word translated in its various forms as “thanks” or “thanksgiving” in the Old Testament, is “to acknowledge or confess sin, God’s character and works, or man’s character.” The Hebrew language does not have an “independent concept of thanks.”

Based on the Old Testament understanding, the attitude of thanks we are familiar with is intertwined with confession and praise. All three – confession, praise, and thanksgiving – are the appropriate responses to who God is and what He has done. It requires that we recognize and acknowledge our sinful nature, God’s holy character, or His gracious works of kindness towards us.

New Testament Greek makes more of a distinction. The Greek word primarily translated as “thanks,” “thankfulness,” and “thanksgiving,” is eucharistia. The NT understanding of thanksgiving is a response to a grace given; the acceptance of a kindness done with the acknowledgement that it was undeserved.

Did you recognize that Greek word, eucharistia? This same word – from which we get the Latin derivation “Eucharist” – also refers to the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion. The next time you participate in the Lord’s Supper remember it is an act of thanksgiving, a response to God’s ultimate act of grace!

But God’s kindness to us did not end with Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross. He continuously pours out His grace. Daily, God acts towards us with kindness we do not deserve. As His undeserving children, we should constantly recognize His grace and acknowledge it before Him.

How often do we offer God thanksgiving with the wrong attitude? How often do we simply fail to acknowledge God’s kindness and grace towards us? Will you take a few minutes today to recognize and acknowledge Him for what He has done?