Time for Thanksgiving

Three weeks from today is Thanksgiving. What goes through your mind when you hear that statement?

• What foods are you going to prepare, or your family is going to prepare?
• What is the schedule?
• Who is coming?
• How will we see everyone in one day?
• When will I shop?
• When will I clean my house?
• I need to prepare my shopping list for the day after Thanksgiving Christmas shopping!
• I need to get my decorating done!
• There goes my diet!!!
• Days of Football!
• Great movies releases!

Many times it is these things that grabs our attention with a firm grip and doesn't let go until the Holiday is over. We then look back and wonder what has happened to the real meaning of Thanksgiving? The real purpose of Thanksgiving is to put one day a side each year to join together with family and friends and offer our thanksgiving to God for all of His provisions. How much time do you spend on Thanksgiving day offering your thankfulness and praise to the Lord? Many times we hurry through the dinner prayer so the food doesn't get cold. Do you know that Thanksgiving wasn't always celebrated yearly until President Lincoln established it as an annual holiday. Before then, different presidents would occasionally pick a random day and declare it a day to offer thanks to God. Sometimes, it was a day of prayer and fasting! Fasting on Thanksgiving, how would that affect our celebrations?
Have you hosted a party to honor a loved one? Did you say a few words of obligatory praise and then sit the guest in the corner to observe the party? Isn't that what we do sometimes on Thanksgiving? Start now planning ways you can bring a time of thanksgiving to your holiday. How are you going to show gratitude and appreciation to the one that you acknowledge as the Giver of all things? In our home, we spend time going around the dinner table sharing the things we are thankful for. Each year there are special moments of blessing from this activity. However, I am going to look for ways to do more. I think the older I get the more I realize how much I have to be thankful for and how inadequate I am in my praise. At times, I have given God crumbs of thanks while I am feasting on a bounty of blessings! That isn't acceptable any more. I want to live every moment of every day praising Him with my life.

I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My life makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble and afflicted hear and be glad.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.

Psalm 34:1-3 (Amplified)

*The devotions from now to Thanksgiving will be covering different things to praise and thank the Lord for.