THE TRUE SPIRIT OF THANKSGIVING.
By G.
A SINCERE expression of thanksgiving is always an expression of appreciation, and therefore one that always imparts pleasure. Thanksgiving and thanks-receiving always indicate a condition of peace and good-will between the parties concerned. This fact alone would be a good reason for the inspired counsel, “In everything give thanks;” but there is still the higher motive—“for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” Now the will of God concerning us is always for our best good, our greatest pleasure; and there can be no pleasanter mood than that experienced when the heart is filled with thanksgiving. Nor is there any greater assurance of added favor than a heart-felt expression of gratitude for favors that have been received. The idea of thanksgiving, like that of many other good things, has been materially lowered by confining its exercise to those things that please the physical senses, that gratify the flesh. Thus the expression of thanks has so degenerated that it has become too much of a formality, a debt due to perfunctory courtesy. For this reason the spirit of true thankfulness and its attendant blessing find so little place in the human heart. Our popular holiday, known as Thanksgiving Day, whatever the merit of its incipient design, is now an apt illustration of the common idea of thanks. Barring a few religious ceremonials, the day is given up to carnal gratification—is too often spent in gluttony and drunkenness. But the true idea of thanksgiving is centrally located in a very important admonition to the church: “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” Eph. 5:18–21. Is it too much to give thanks always? Is it too much to give thanks for all things? It is too much to expect of the “natural man,” for he does not know how to be happy. All he knows of thankfulness is for that which satisfies the cravings of the flesh. Anything else is “foolishness” to him, because it is “spiritually discerned,” and therefore beyond his experience. But to give thanks “always for all things unto God” ought not to be too much for one who professes to love God; for he ought to “know that all things work together for good to them that love God.” This being the case, where, then, do murmuring and complaining come in? As the Scripture says about “boasting,” they are “excluded.” There is absolutely no place in all the theory of Christianity for complaints of one’s lot, or murmurings because of anything that comes into one’s experience. The mercies of God are always so much greater than the evils that come to us, that a true spirit of thankfulness will be so absorbed in contemplating the good as to preclude all brooding over the evil. The worries of this life are mainly over troubles of the imagination, anyhow; but allowing the real trials that come to us all reasonable place in the mind, they are happily described by the apostle Paul as “our light affliction, which is but for a moment,” and even at that he adds that it “worketh for us a far more exceeding weight of glory.” This was the counsel and experience of one who was called to suffer for the name of Christ. Acts 9:15, 16. Such a faith could be “exceeding joyful in all our tribulation” (2 Cor. 7:4). And why not? For “tribulation worketh patience” (Rom. 5:3), and “ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.” Heb. 10:36. In vision John saw the company of those who should be sealed standing before the throne of God, and it was said that they “came out of great tribulation.” So we see that tribulation for the truth’s sake, instead of being a cause of complaint, is really a cause for thanksgiving, and no one need stagger at the suggestion, “In everything give thanks.” The Epistle to the Hebrews tells of those persecuted ones who took joyfully the spoiling of their goods (ch. 10:34), and this is a point where people are more apt to complain of hardships than in any other respect. The natural heart will resent the destruction of property more strenuously than any other calamity; but even here the faithful child of God could see reason for thankfulness, because he knew that there was in heaven a “better and more enduring substance.” The eye of faith always sees the things that are not seen by the natural eye, it always sees the things that are eternal. 2 Cor. 4:18. Therefore, it always, in all things, looking beyond the temporal, sees cause for thankfulness and rejoicing. In the first chapter of Romans, Paul tells how men fell away from a knowledge of God into heathenism. He says it was “because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful.” Therefore, through a lack of thankfulness, they “became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” Such dire consequences ought to be a lesson of warning to us, instilling in us a determination to cultivate a spirit of thankfulness, not merely as a matter of courtesy, for things that are pleasing to the natural senses, but as a matter of faith in the Word, that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.” Let us all, on this Thanksgiving Day, endeavor to rise to a higher plane of appreciation of the prospect before us through faith in Christ. “Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful. . . . And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.” Col. 3:15–17. G.