Thanksgiving
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
We are now a week past Thanksgiving Day. In the aftermath of its celebration we may notice a few more pounds of weight. However, there are hopefully some more noble features to its afterglow. For example, many are left with the recollection of a family gathering around a table of abundance. At that meal, likely someone voiced a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s bounty. Perchance we are living in the afterglow of reliving a special thanksgiving worship service, at which time we joined a host of fellow believers in a community expression of gratitude. If we take the longer look we may well experience a recounting of blessings in the year past and anticipation of those yet to be. Just maybe in this week of reflecting back on Thanksgiving Day we are filled with resolve to make every day more consistently a thanksgiving day. If so, how so?
What is the process by which we can maintain a Thanksgiving afterglow that will last until the fourth Thursday of November in the upcoming year? Theology 101 offers a three-part approach to enlarging our hearts of gratitude. The first item on the list has to do with an inward sentiment. We might call this a heart feeling of deep gratitude to God and others for how they continue to bless our lives. The starting point, of course, is within us. We cultivate in our spirits a desire to be more grateful persons. This calls for times of reflection and counting our blessings, a requirement often hard to meet in the busyness of everyday life. Do we not find that thanksgiving takes its starting point with an inward feeling? We could call this inward sentiment the “want to” in the experience of becoming a consistently grateful person.
A second stage in the process might be termed a “God-ward” expression. The psalmist prayed in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” The second part of this prayer speaks to having a renewed spirit that sees God behind every good and perfect gift. Given a renewed heart, the pathway for expressing thanksgiving to God is made up of two primary lanes that often are intermingled — prayer and praise. We choose to include expressions of grateful dependence on our generous Heavenly Father in both private and public times of prayer. We also make sure we give thoughtful attention to expressions of praise to Him, both for who He is and what He does. In doing so we are obeying the admonition of Psalm 100:4: “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him and bless His name.” Much praise takes the form of verbal expressions set to music. Songs of praise give God-ward expression to inward gratitude. To do so is a matter of taking seriously the truth of Psalm 145:3: “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.”
‘Thanks-living’
In addition to the practice of prayer and praise, another stage in maintaining a Thanksgiving afterglow that burns brightly throughout the year might be expressed as outward conduct. People have sometimes coined the word “thanks-living” to capture this idea. Living out daily gratitude involves an upright life that pleases God and reflects Him consistently in our words and deeds. Words are among indispensible expressions of gratitude, but how we choose to live also is a way of expressing a grateful heart. A Thanksgiving afterglow may well depend on how well we do in inward sentiment, God-ward expression and outward conduct.
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Jerry Batson is a retired Alabama Baptist pastor who also has served as associate dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and professor of several schools of religion during his career.
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