Mannaburgers and Roast Quail

Thanksgiving is acknowledging that someone has given us what was not our due.

Thanksgiving is recognizing we have been given something not owed us. "But," someone says: "I've been a decent sort of person. I'm a good moral citizen. I believe in God, go to church periodically, put some money in the offering, pray when I think of it. Why shouldn't God recognize my spirituality with showers of blessings?"

We Americans are big on entitlement. We presuppose that God owes us something or that God is in our debt.

But not so! God's goodness is never earned. If it were earned, it would be barter not blessing. In fact, sometimes God surprises us in that when we least deserve it, God pours out gracious blessings on us. An entitlement mentality seldom leads to thanksgiving. When we think we've got it coming to us, what is there to be thankful for? And why not grumble when we don't receive what we think we deserve?

"Thankfulness," veteran preacher Warren Wiersbe once observed "is the opposite of selfishness. The selfish person says, ‘I deserve what comes to me! Other people ought to make me happy.' But the mature Christian realizes that life is a gift from God, and that the blessings of life come only from God's bountiful hand."

Thanksgiving is the response to grace. Thanksgiving humbly acknowledges: "God how good You are to me!" Thanksgiving is responding to God's grace even in the midst of trouble. "In everything," Paul wrote, "give thanks." Not necessarily for everything, but in every situation, give thanks for who God is.

Give thanks even when mannaburgers are boring. Give thanks even when we're tired of roast quail. Give thanks when Egypt tempts us to return. Give thanks at the waters of Marah and in the Desert of Sin. Give thanks because of God's grace even in the midst of trouble.

Thanksgiving is a response to grace.

Once after a message, someone asked me a pointed question. "Pastor, how do you live up to your own preaching?" I had to respond honestly: "I don't always!" And here's a case in point. Like many of you, this week, I have counted again the tremendous blessings of life. But there are times when I take God's blessings for granted. There are times when I forget and relapse into grumbling. There are times when I forget that life itself is

a gift of grace. There are times when I forget what God has done in Jesus. How about you?

Avery Brooke offers this straightforward prayer: "I have many things to be thankful for, God. Sometimes I remember them and other times I forget. When something large or small goes wrong, it fills my mind and I forget those things for which—when I remember—I am thankful. Help me to remember the good things, God. To name them, to savor them, and to be thankful to you. Amen" (Avery Brooke, Plain Prayer for a Complicated World).