I'm Thankful!

This year, my family and I have come home for Thanksgiving.  Home for me is Iowa.  I’m looking forward to spending time with my extended Otto family and with my Mom’s family as well.  We’ve spent a few days here in Iowa resting and relaxing, just being with my folks.  I’ve spent the last several services at church preaching on thanksgiving.  This last Sunday, I preached on what I am thankful for.  I’m thankful for a lot of things: for my family, for my home, for my church, for my salvation and for the Word of God. 

This morning I was reading in my devotion time out of the Psalms.  Specifically, I was reading the 136^th Psalm.  This psalm is completely about being thankful to the Lord.  Verse after verse tells us what we need to be thankful for—His mercy, His works, His goodness.  We ought to be so very thankful. 

It seems that our society has drifted from the intent of the original Thanksgiving meal.  The Pilgrims were thankful for the basics—survival.  They were thankful for just being alive.  They were also thankful for another basic item—liberty.  We’ve moved away from that and spend a lot of time being thankful for material possessions, for wealth and, well, stuff. 

I find it interesting that in America, the self-storage industry is over $38 billion dollars a year.  There are 2.3 billion square feet of storage space available nationwide.  That’s a lot of stuff.  Apparently, it’s a lot of stuff that people don’t need because they are storing it. 

Here’s irony:  we’ll spend Thursday being thankful for stuff.  And then starting Friday, the largest shopping season of the year will kick off with a vengeance and we’ll begin the hunt for more stuff.  I’m not against gift giving or shopping. 

I’m against being thankful only one day a year.  We should be thankful every day.  We should express our thanks for what the Lord has done for us every day.  Take time to be thankful.  Perhaps if we were more thankful every day, we wouldn’t see so much discontentment with what we do have.  Do we really need that 65-inch 4K TV that’s on sale for Black Friday?  It is bigger than the 55-inch TV that we have now.  Maybe I should go look at that sales paper again. . . .