Recurring Thankfulness

(I feel that this post is a jumbled mess of thoughts, but I thought that I would share them nevertheless, if for no other reason than to be humbled by my inadequate ability to write out my thoughts well!)

The issue of thankfulness has been on my heart and mind most of yesterday and the great majority of today. This is appropriate, as today is Thanksgiving, and it's a natural thing to think about giving thanks and expressing thanks to those around you. I have been thinking much about this in correlation to Psalm 136. This Psalm is full of nothing but expressing thanks to our Heavenly Father (as is much of the book of Psalms itself). Repetitively, throughout the entire Psalm, we read "Give thanks to the Lord!" "Give thanks to the God of gods!" "Give thanks to the Lord of lords!" "Give thanks to the God of heaven!" Giving thanks to the Father, for a vast number of reasons, is the recurring theme in this Psalm. So it should be in our lives!

I know that it is easy for me to come upon the threshold of Thanksgiving Day, ready and willing to praise the Lord and give thanks for all that He has given me over this past year. It is just a given that today of all days we are to be thankful. But what about the rest of the days in the year? My heart is convicted that I focus too much on being thankful to Him this day, and too little on being thankful to Him every day.

So, how does my heart address this? I must remind myself of the greatest reason there ever will be to give thanks. In Psalm 136, we see in verses one and twenty-six the greatest reason to give thanks --- a commandment to give thanks to the Lord, for His steadfast love endures forever! It was through His steadfast love that He sent us His Son on the Cross to die for our sins. He loved us enough to kill His Son in our place. This is the epitome of steadfast love. And after knowing and believing this blessed truth, after becoming believers and followers of Christ; we still sin; we still struggle; we still fail to glorify Him to the best of our abilities. Even in this, He shows us His steadfast love through the continual bestowing of precious grace over our lives, a grace that is made new every moment of every day, which was made possible through His Son's death. What greater, more magnificent reason is there to be thankful? There is none. Period.

His steadfast love endures forever! And because His steadfast love endures forever, our thankfulness, by His amazing grace, can endure forever. It can be something that is never-ending; it can be something that is repetitive and recurring, because we have an eternal and never-ending reason to give thanks: the death of His Son on the cross for our sins, the grace that He gives us through that, and the eternal home that He is bringing us to.

Yes, let's be thankful for the many gifts the Lord has given us today, but let's not forget the greatest gift that He has given us. And most of all, let's not stop giving thanks at the close of Thanksgiving. Let's not stop waking up in the morning, reminding our hearts to be thankful, for the Lord has given us the greatest reason of all to be thankful. (And when you add on to that reason the blessings that He gives us in our lives on this earth --- our thankfulness should only increase ever the more! What bliss!) Let's make it a recurring theme in our lives to give thanks, for the glory of our Father. Only by His amazing grace!