Giving Thanks, a Christmas Adventure – Day One

I realize it’s going to sound cheesy to say thanks for subscribing to this study on gratitude, but I can’t help myself.. I’m just humbled, and silly excited that you’ve decided to join me right here at the onset of the biggest season of consumerism on the calendar, to resist a season of grasping in favor of cultivating a grateful heart. So, thank you! And now, let’s do this thing…

Day One

Giving thanks is mentioned early, often, and throughout the Word of God. We’re admonished to be thankful, to offer thanksgiving, to abound in gratitude. I consider myself a thankful person, but the more I know of Jesus, the more I’m drawn to a fuller gratitude, one that can give thanks in everything. I realize it’s scriptural and I’m not reinventing the wheel here, but in the past I’ve kind of left this concept on the shelf because it seemed so undoable, this giving thanks in everything. But I’m ready to look it in the face. I want to understand how I can count all things joy when circumstances feel anything but joyful. I want to know and celebrate Jesus as the Gracious Plenty that He is, and I want to have an elegant abundance of Christ to share with others. To do so, I must learn this fuller gratitude.

“Thanks” and “thanksgiving” both come to us from the Greek word eucharisteō, meaning to be grateful, to feel thankful. To give thanks, to give eucharisteō, is to express gratitude to the source of the gift. Expression is everything. Gratitude that isn’t expressed isn’t gratitude at all.

This is the idea behind the English phrase “to say grace” (express a gift or favor), or what we southerners fondly refer to as “saying the blessing.” We’re simply acknowledging the source of the gift. At the root of thanksgiving then is this acknowledgement of the Gift-Giver. Saying grace, saying the blessing, giving thanks, is to acknowledge God as the source of the gift and express appreciation to Him for it. This is the thought I want us to establish for the rest of our study. Scratch that, for the rest of our lives I hope we’ll remember that the heartbeat of thanksgiving is acknowledgement. To live acknowledging God is to live eucharisteō, what I’m calling Living Thanksgiving.

See you tomorrow…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS