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GIVE THANKS

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Dec 26, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 50.

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GIVE THANKS.

By Luella L. Harmon

LET us make every day of the year a Thanksgiving Day, “giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;” for “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.”
It is easy to give God our thanks when we can see things working out according to our own wills, when everything looks bright and promising; easy to thank Him for wealth, health, and friends, and for pleasant home relations; but do we thank Him for misfortunes and afflictions? Are you poor? Thank God for poverty. There are many beautiful promises to the poor,—promises that none but the poor can claim. You do not have to worry over the woes and calamities pronounced upon the rich. Jesus was poor.
Are you persecuted? Thank God for persecution if it is for obeying His Word. You may claim the promises that only the persecuted can claim. Jesus was persecuted. Are you hated by those who should be friends and loved ones? Thank God for it. You need not worry over the wo pronounced upon all men whom the world praises and speaks well of. Jesus was hated by His own people.
Do you mourn? Thank God for sorrows that melt the heart. Those who mourn can claim Christ’s promise of comfort to mourners. Are you weary and burdened? Thank God, only the weary and burdened are invited to go to Jesus for rest.
Are you sick or lame or blind? Thank God for that; for you have all the blessed promises of healing, and the privilege of being healed by the greatest of all Physicians.
Let us thank God always, “choosing rather to suffer afflictions with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season,” “for our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”
“Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.”
LUELLA L. HARMON.