Thanksliving

I’m going to be quaint here, something you might think for the inside of a fortune cookie – Not Thanksgiving, Thanksliving. Thanksliving: A Life that Proceeds out of Thanks to God. You give thanks, you live thanks. You could thank God, but if you don’t live for God, He isn’t being given thanks. This is how thanks reads in scripture. In Romans 1, the unthankful is the unbeliever, who lives for himself. If you are thankful, you don’t live for yourself, you live for God, because you get it. God has given you everything you have. Every good thing comes from God (James 1:17) and every bad thing comes because of men. You can’t separate yourself from the bad things, because even if you are born with a nature to sin, you also chose to sin. If sin entered into the world through the first sin, you’ve committed a sin, offended the law in one point at least, as James 2:10 mentions. Even if there is bad all around, the good things outweigh the bad, or else you would be sunk. You wouldn’t survive. The pilgrims knew that, and after they survived the Winter, they gave thanks for what God had done. Abraham Lincoln, I believe, instituted Thanksgiving as an American Holiday, fitting for a country that made its way through a horrific conflict, the Civil War, with hundreds of thousands of deaths, and coming through intact. For us, it’s redemption and eternal life through Jesus.