In the United States the tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving is commonly traced to a 1621 celebration in Plymouth, Massachusetts which was made possible by a good harvest the previous year. The first nationwide thanksgiving celebration did not take place until much later when George Washington proclaimed that November 26, 1789 should be set aside . . . “as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God.”
The reason for any celebration is that you have something to celebrate. In our country we have all kinds of celebrations. National celebrations include New Year’s Day, Independence Day, and Armistice Day. There are also many sectional celebrations. Thanksgiving Day is primarily a religious celebration, in that we celebrate the goodness of God. There is a sense in which no gift is ours until we have thanked the giver.
After a tour of the United States some years ago an European was interviewed and asked to give his impressions of our country. He had seen our skyscrapers, inspected our factories, and visited our national wonders. But when reporters asked what had impressed him most about America, he replied simply, “The size of the American garbage can.” Our lack of gratitude for God’s blessings has often caused us to waste our resources needlessly.
Too often we have celebrated the goodness of God in the same way materialists do. We give evidence of being kin to the man called The Rich Young Ruler who came to Jesus asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. The next time you read his story in the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, notice how many personal pronouns he uses to describe what he owns. His pride and selfishness was on display big time. He had riches, good character, position, and ambition. Jesus told him that he had to have a different priority. He went away sorrowfully “for he had great riches.”
How should Christians count their blessings? A good place to begin might be to thank God for the capacity to be thankful. The Hebrew word for “man” means “an upward looking creature.” Next, we can make a list of what Apostle Paul calls “the unsearchable riches of Christ”: Deliverance from sin (forgiveness, cleansing); the capacity to forgive others; “the peace that passes understanding” (serenity of spirit); comfort in the time of sorrow; courage in time of emergency and stress; the capacity for spiritual growth in Christlikeness. And the list could go on and on.
Whether we realize it or not, blessings are a judgment. We judge ourselves by where we set the period when we count our blessings. A materialist looks only at things. An egotist thinks only of self – other people don’t count. The cemetery is full of people who thought the world couldn’t get along without them. The late Alexander Wolcott once was listening to a man so enamored with his own voice that he would not let anyone else get a word into the conversation edgewise. Thinking that the egotist had been talking long enough, Wolcott said: “Pardon me; my leg has gone to sleep. I think I will join it.”
Our blessings – all of them – were given to us by God. If we use them for selfish ends, we become ingrates and parasites. If we use them with the awareness that we are trustees, we will share them with others. It is the only way that we can become channels of God’s grace. It is by practicing faithful stewardship that we can transmute God’s blessings on to others.
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, it is the parent of all the others.
The Paper Pulpit 
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