Posts Tagged ‘Thankfulness’

Thanksgiving

Tuesday, November 14th, 2017

Benediction
Col 3: 15-17
Dc. Larry Brockman

This evenings Liturgy of the Hours scripture is from Colossians 3. It says: “Dedicate yourselves to thankfulness”. How timely is that? Because in just a little over a week, we will all gather with our families for the traditional Thanksgiving holiday.

But what does that really mean? Does it mean we gotta get the turkey and all the trimmings done so we can share a big feast with all the relatives in the family, while all the while our minds are occupied with many other things: time to rush to the stores for our “holiday” shopping on Black Friday; time to send out the Christmas Cards; time to put up the lights and tree; time to bake, decorate, and party; and on and on. But you know what? Maybe we should step back from all that and think about what Thanksgiving is really all about.

400 or so years ago a band of pilgrims came to this country to escape religious tyranny from the government of England. They had to scrape everything together from the land they settled on. But they set aside a day for Thanksgiving: thankful they had survived- many hadn’t; thankful they had shelter- it had been close; thankful for their food for the winter ; thankful for the friendly Indians; and thankful that they were now free of their oppressors. And not just thankful, but rather, thankful to God.

A century ago, we institutionalized this custom in this country. And so, Thanksgiving isn’t a massive celebration with food, drink, and football. Rather it is our chance to express our thankfulness to God for all that we do have; for all of our blessings. We still have our freedom of faith and we have many blessings- food, shelter, family, health, friends, and most of all, life itself. We need to express this Thankfulness to God the Father from our hearts.

Our Thanksgiving celebration is really over the infinite mercy of God that has resulted in all these blessings