Thanksgiving, 2024

I wrote up an entry for Thanksgiving Day earlier and was all set to go with it. It was primarily Scriptures on giving thanks. (Go figure.) Then I started ruminating on some of the Scriptures I had listed. One of them caught my attention, and I decided to write a different entry. Here it is.

There are lots of biblical injunctions to give thanks (1 Thess 5:18; Psa 100:4; Php 4:6; Col 3:15, 17; Col 4:2; etc., etc.). One that stood out to me, though, was

Give thanks to YHWH, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever. (Psa 107:1; Psa 136:1)

It is, on the surface, just like all the others, but ... I see something more, something different.

Lots of texts command us to give thanks, and I can think of at least one that warns of what happens if we don't (Rom 1:21). This one, however, tells us why. "Give thanks to YHWH," it says. That is a command. Then it says "for." That's a reason. Why should we give thanks to God? Because He is good. It's a simple statement of fact, yet it is broad. "He is good." How good? Paul wrote that "God causes all things to work together for good" (Rom 8:28). Broad. James wrote, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (James 1:17). "Every good gift" is from God. That's good. James also said, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds" because God is in that, too, and it's for our good (James 1:2-4). Give thanks to God, then, because He is that good. The verse isn't done. It commands us to give thanks and it tells why -- He is good. That is followed by another "for." The psalmist has an explanation of the reason He is good: "His steadfast love endures forever." That, dear readers, is stunning. He has chosen to set His love on us, not because we are magnificent creatures. We are not. We are, at the outset, enemies of God (Rom 5:10; 8:7). God chooses to set His steadfast love on us ... forever. For that reason, He is good. For that reason He is good to us. Because of His steadfast love, He makes everything that happens to us work out for good. Because of His steadfast love, He provides every good thing. Because of His steadfast love, He makes every painful thing serve His purposes for our best.

The world has mostly forgotten Who we are giving thanks to today. It's God. We believers know why we're giving thanks to Him today ... and every other day. He is good. He is love. His steadfast love never fails, so He is always good to us. Give thanks. God knows we have every reason to do so.