Colossians 2:6-15
The year 2020 has been a hard time in many ways for our nation. For some businesses, churches, families, and individuals the virus created some very bad and sad times. When we start looking for a reason to give thanks, we find it hard to have a thankful heart. We become like Snoopy in his Joe Cool outfit with his dark sunglasses thinking about Thanksgiving. Joe Cool is standing outside trying to wrangle an invitation to a Thanksgiving dinner. In despair, he sits down and leans back against a rock and says, “No one ever invites Joe Cool home for Thanksgiving.”
So many times, we seem to be left out of the loop of life that contains the things of thanksgiving. I want to share with you the source that will allow you to experience thanksgiving even in the worst times of life. In his letter to the Colossians Paul shared his source of thanksgiving even from inside a prison where he knew he would die. Paul knew the freedom from rules that come with a new life in Christ. As he wrote this letter, he focused on what had produced the joy of thanksgiving in his life.
“And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.”
My faith in Christ Jesus has enabled me to experience thanksgiving even when times are not good. I know that God holds my life in the good days and the hard times too. In our troubled world I know that by faith I still have reasons to be thankful for each day that I have been given to live.
Paul explains in his letter to the Colossians the source of faith that gives and produces the spirit that enables us to have a living daily thanksgiving within our lives.
“Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. So you also are complete through your union with Christ who is head over every ruler and authority.”
Jesus is the source of life and the reason for thanksgiving. Faith in Christ gives us many lasting reasons to know the joy of thanksgiving. In my 84 years of life, I have many things that Jesus has given me for which I am thankful. My list is long, but here is a very short list that reflects some blessings I have had in life. I was born in a country that prizes freedom. That freedom allows me to worship, speak, bear arms and choose how and where I live my life. I give thanks for the family I was born into, because I had parents that loved me and wanted me to do well with life. I had a family that took me to God’s church all the years of my growing toward being an adult. I have the joy of a wife that has been my love and partner for sixty-two years. I give thanks for our three children and six grandchildren. I give thanks for friends that have entered my journey of life. I give thanks for friends and family that have served our nation to keep us free and provide us with the protection of law enforcement. God has blessed me with strength and health to live a productive life even as life changes with age.
In my memory bank, I carry so much that allows me the joy of daily thanksgiving. The road of faith in Jesus Christ will always take you down the road of life that allows you to experience the joy of real thanksgiving. The great poet, Robert Frost, wrote a poem about the roads we take. It reads, “I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
If we choose to take the road of faith that Jesus offers to each of us, we will know the source for our lives that allows us to enjoy the life that gives us real thanksgiving. This kind of thanksgiving also brings family and community together to know the bond of a love that gives us thankful happy hearts. Our hymn writers have put songs into words of thanksgiving for us to sing of faith. In 1844 Henry Alford gave us these words:
“Come ye thankful people, come. Raise the song of harvest home. All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin. God our Maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied. Come to God’s own temple, come. Raise the song of the harvest home.”
Katharine Lee Bates wrote these words in 1904:
“O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain. America! America! God shed his grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shiny sea.
O beautiful, for heroes prove in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life. America! America! May God thy gold refine, till all success be nobleness and every gain divine.
O beautiful for patriot dream sees beyond the years. Thine alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears! America! America! God mend thine every flaw confirm thy soul in self-control thy liberty in law.”
