Thanks-giving

If you know me well, you’ve probably heard me ramble on about “an attitude of thanksgiving” more than once. It has been my “theme,” if you will, for the past year, and I have loved seeing the Lord work on the hardened parts of my heart through simple lessons of thankfulness.

I’ve always loved Thanksgiving, but this year I am loving it even more as we seek to see all the little blessings of the Lord in our daily lives. We’ve been filling up our "thankfulness jar" with scraps of paper bearing the written names of gifts from the Lord, from large to small. Eli dictates his thankfulness to me daily, and I write them all down… candy, airplanes, bicycle, Daddy, stickers, red leaves,… We add all of our thankfulness daily to this jar, and we’ll read through our writings on Thanksgiving morning.

And the image of an empty glass jar slowly, over the course of the month, being filled up with scraps of yellow and orange paper? It’s a perfect analogy for how thankfulness can fill up our hearts, leaving little room for complaining.

So, this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for a whole jar-ful of little gifts, from chilly, rainy mornings to candles flickering to a bouquet of fresh flowers. I am thankful for our cozy little home and daily provision and my family close by. I am thankful for my husband who loves me and my son who is healthy and my God who gave me all of this.

But more than that? I am thankful for the cross of Christ, His blood spilled on my behalf, the peace I have, eternally, with the God of the universe, because Jesus paid for my sins. All other gifts pale in comparison to this one. But I believe that as we thank God for all His many blessings in every day, we are brought into deeper communion with our Savior who died for us.

Happy, happy Thanksgiving! May we rejoice today in the abundant gifts of our Father.