This week our nation will ‘celebrate’ the secular feast of Thanksgiving. We put ‘celebrate’ in quotes because the day has become less one of focus on thanking the Lord for His blessings bestowed upon us and more one of thanking ourselves for that with which we’ve managed to overload our tables, and thereby overloaded our stomachs.
But the focus of this article is not on excess or self indulgence for one day out of the year. Rather, this focus in on a more traditional view of giving thanks.
It would be an overgeneralization to say that ALL of us have more than we need. But we can agree that it’s certainly true for most of us. When we think about our excesses, we often stop to ponder how we might share from the many blessings we’ve been given with those who DON’T have enough.
Without wanting to promote any sense of pride among us, our little community sponsors quite a number of outreach activities for those in need. This has far less to do with some concerted effort on the part of our people as a community than it does the individual hearts of the really good people who make up this Orthodox community of believers.
In short, we want more than anything to be found by our Lord to have hearts that conform to His will, to His example, and to His commandments. We really want to feed the hungry, to clothe those in need, to visit the sick, to pray for any and all who are in need. We want to LIVE Matthew 25:34-36!
In short, we want to be giving, not just of material goods, not only of finances, but of our time, of our effort. The Lord has showered us with His love. Now we want nothing more than to be reflections of that love to others in need.
And in this giving, there is the root element of thanksgiving, for we show the Lord our thankfulness for the excesses with which He has blessed us to the extent that we share from those excesses.
And what is the result of this kind of sharing, of this “thanksgiving of giving”?
The immediate response is yet more thanksgiving on the part of those who receive in their need. It doesn’t matter if we know of their thanksgiving. In fact, it is better that we don’t know. May their hearts be moved to give thanks to the One who provided the excess so that they might receive, not from us, but from Him!
St. Paul expresses this in his second letter to the people of Corinth with these words:
Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness, while you are enriched in everything for all liberality, which causes thanksgiving through us to God. For the administration of this service not only supplies the needs of the saints, but also is abounding through many thanksgivings to God, while, through the proof of this ministry, they glorify God for the obedience of your confession to the gospel of Christ, and for your liberal sharing with them and all men, and by their prayer for you, who long for you because of the exceeding grace of God in you. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! (2Cor 9:12-15)
What is this “indescribable gift”? Is it not God’s uncanny ability to bless so many with one single gift? Thanks be to the Lord for all things!
Have a most blessed Thanksgiving 2024!
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