Preparing for Thanksgiving

Holidays are special, and the Thanksgiving holiday is special to people in America for many different reasons. Those reasons may include family, country, food, or several days off during the week. But for the church a day of Thanksgiving set aside during the week should be a significant time to recount the wonders of God. But recounting the wonders of God may take some preparation for the average church goers in America.

The reason being is that the average American church goers are not focused on wonders. If you ask most people in the church, who are busy with family, jobs, activities and church, what they are thankful for, the response is, “I am thankful to have made it through the week.” There is not much time to contemplate the wonders of God or there is not much time taken to think on the wonders of God. But taking time at a special time of year like Thanksgiving to think on the wonders of God may do more than provide for a special time of thanksgiving, it may have a transforming affect on average church goers, turning us from ungrateful to thankful.

Let’s consider the wondrous things God does in the first heavens. Elihu says to Job, 11He loads the thick cloud with moisture; the clouds scatter his lightning.12They turn around and around by his guidance, to accomplish all that he commands them on the face of the habitable world. 13Whether for correction or for his land or for love, he causes it to happen. (Job 37:11-13) God is in the heavens doing all his pleasure (Ps.115:3) taking the stores of his own water sources and loading them into thick clouds that are holding tanks. He loads them out of the waters in the earth. He takes the water out of seas by evaporation. The salt stays behind and what was fluid flies off from the waters in vapor that is lighter than the atmosphere so it can go up and load into clouds. The vapors condense through the forming of tiny dust particles forming clouds loaded with water. He then directs them around the heavens at his pleasure while they obey his direction like a company of choreographed dancers in all their glory.

These clouds of water then clash together in the heavens sending forth lighting at his will. Lightening is an atmospheric charge that is explained by various theories. But we do not know how it occurs. However we do know there are more than 16 million lightening storms in the world each year, a lightening bolt can reach temperatures of more than 54,000 degrees and travel at 22,000 mph. Lightening is not a wonder of science it is a display of God’s wondrous work. He brings them out of the clouds like clashing cymbals sending forth majestic light and fearful sounds. They are like a well tuned orchestra displaying a symphony of perfect sounds in the midst of an array of a perfectly engineered light display. And man can only wonder at this display of unfathomable judgments.

He commands them for correction, land and love and they act at his command. If he pours forth an inch of rain on one square mile of land he gives forth 17,377,536 gallons of water weighing 144,735,360 pounds. And when he sends these drops forth sometimes they are big enough to lay down the plants in a field or flood the field and sometimes they are small enough to gently wet the leaves and fall into the ground to nourish the roots. Some rains sweep away land, animals and people and some fill water tanks for drinking and cooking. He pours it how as he wills. Some lightening strikes fear as it claims a life or burns a home, some strikes ignite a forest burning and clearing to purify the land, and some leaves a person in awe and wonder at it’s beauty. As Elihu says to Job after consideration of these wondrous things God does, 14"Hear this, O Job; stop and consider the wondrous works of God.(Job.37:14).

A church that shows forth a form of godliness but denies it’s power is an ungrateful church (2Tim.3:2,5). But a church that is looking on the wondrous things that God is doing everyday in things like rain and lightening and the orchestration of clouds she will respond with awe and thanksgiving before God who does all his pleasure for his glory and the good of his creatures. Whether it be in God’s general revelation or his special revelation let us not hide from ourselves or one another the wondrous things that God is doing in his creation, providence and redemption. Then we will come into his presence together with thanksgiving. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.(Ps.78:4)