Why Thanksgiving Was Never Meant to be a One-Day Holiday

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Thanksgiving is perhaps the most classic and well-loved of all American celebrations. It holds the annual reminder that thankfulness is the appropriate and necessary response to all we have been given.

What a rare delight that people across the nation pause for a rare moment to speak forth words of heartfelt gratitude! I don’t know what your Thanksgiving table will look like this year, or who will be gathered around it, but would you allow me to barge in uninvited and share with you a few revelations that God has been sharing with me?

Thanksgiving is not a single day on the calendar. It was always meant to be a lifestyle; this amazing lifestyle is the unique and unmatched manner in which we are able to access the presence of the Father.

“Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise” (Psalm 100:4).

Perhaps you, like me, will savor the paraphrase of Psalm 100 in the Message Bible:

“On your feet now—applaud God! Bring a gift of laughter, sing yourselves into his presence. Know this: God is God, and God, God. He made us; we didn’t make him. We’re his people, his well-tended sheep. Enter with the password: ‘Thank you!’ Make yourselves at home, talking praise. Thank him. Worship him.” (Psalm 100:1-4, MSG).

Thanksgiving was never meant to be an annual celebration identified by pilgrims, pies, football and stuffing, rather it was intended to be the most accurate demonstration of an intimate relationship between humanity and their heavenly, generous Father. The only possible response is, “Thanks, Dad!”

And we must not wait for a month, or a day on a calendar to provoke this heartfelt thanksgiving!

Thanks-speaking is the language of the Father’s family. We don’t speak with words of complaining, in the tongue of lack or with the accent of griping. We are to be thanks-speakers every day of every year:

• I am thankful for my home, family and job.
• I am grateful for food, heat and a car.
• I am so thankful for friends who make me laugh, who keep me humble and who challenge my thinking processes.
• I am thankful for my Bible, for worship music, for prayers both answered and unanswered and for YOU, my Father!

Thanks-singing is yet another delightful discipline. It has the joyful ability to turn the dry and barren wilderness into a fruitful and lush garden of life. But, if you wait until you “feel” like singing, you will likely never sing again.

Feelings don’t determine the frequency of our song, the depth of the harmonies, or the breadth of its audience. The song that fills the days of our lives is birthed in the heart of the Father’s love for us. He loves me completely and unconditionally! He loves me extravagantly! That gives me something to sing about every day of every year!

When the arctic winds of January are gives a song! When February 14th comes around, and relationships remain difficult and demanding, or your heart shivers from perpetual loneliness, He sings a love song into personal darkness and pain.

When winter stubbornly lingers into March and April, He sings of His vibrant power and we join bravely in the defiant duet with Him. Regardless of the changes that seasons might bring or the circumstances of life that knock on our door, the song remains steady and strong as the children of God sing with the saints of the ages,

“Great is Thy Faithfulness! O God, my Father!