Faith | It’s time to count our blessings, including being part of God’s family
I’ve had so many great blessings to be thankful for: My wife whom—I don’t deserve—, two beautiful daughters, and a grandson who is well beyond his nine years in chronological age. Let me add to that list, my late fantastic parents, a great brother and sister, close friends that I consider as family, and many others I consider as extended family.
Another blessing I am thankful for is to live in the greatest nation on earth which gives not only religious freedom to worship God without government interference, but the freedom and opportunity to strive to fulfill our calling.
It’s thought-provoking that our forefathers recognized the need for our nation to establish a special day of thanksgiving to God. George Washington declared a one time Proclamation for our nation’s first Thanksgiving to be held on November 26, 1789.
He said, “Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor ... .”
Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November an annual day of Thanksgiving to help unite the nation after the Civil War. May we do the same to make this a special Thanksgiving of bringing our nation back together from much political division.
I’m grateful to our forefathers for seeking unity and declaring a day to remind us to always give thanks.
Personally, God has graciously blessed me by giving me an extended life with reasonable health well beyond what most of my doctors predicted. While being close to death a time or two, the most important thing that I valued was to let those I love know how much I love and care about them.
I encourage you to not let divisive issues or your pride get in the way of expressing how much you care about the people you love.
I continue to have the privilege and responsibility before God to live in loving harmony with others, always wanting what is best for them—and to glorify him in the process. The ultimate best for anyone is to have a personal relationship with God their creator who promises an eternal, happy life for those reconciled with him through Christ.
The Thanksgiving holiday, most importantly, reminds me to thank God for giving me a part of himself in his son, Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect, sinless life as an example for us. He not only sacrificed himself to be brutally crucified on a Roman cross, but while on that cross he paid the penalty for all of my—and your—sins. As a result of Christ’s sacrifice, we can have the righteousness of God and can live one day in his heavenly kingdom in unimaginable happiness forever if we have trusted him as our Savior and Lord.
It seems so simple, yet many miss the truth, just like the religious self-righteous Pharisees of Christ’s time that kept trying to earn their own way to Heaven. They, and many others today, stumble over the stumbling stone noted in Romans 9:32-33. They miss the truth described in Ephesians 2:8-10:
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Jesus gets, and deserves, all the credit and glory for our salvation when we trust in him.
It greatly saddens me that some people I deeply care about, and so many others on judgment day, will boast of how much they did for God, and thus deserve entrance into Heaven. Yet, Jesus will simply say to them that he never knew them (Matthew 7:21-23). God does have good works for us to do, but these are only the evidence of our salvation, not the cause of our salvation.
Being part of God’s family, based on what Jesus did for us, is the best reason to give thanks not only on Thanksgiving Day, but also for every day God has gifted us on this earth.
