The Thanksgiving

The apostle sets down a short command with a long reach. In every thing give thanks, he says, and adds that this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Not in the pleasant things only, but in every thing; not when we feel grateful, but as a settled practice; and not as an optional refinement of the devout, but as the will of God for every one of his people. Thanksgiving is commanded, which means it is a duty and a discipline, something to be cultivated and practiced, and not merely a mood that comes and goes.

We should feel the weight of that word, every thing. It is easy to give thanks for the manifest blessings, the health and the provision and the joys, and even the ungodly can manage that much when things go well. But in every thing, in the hard things as well as the pleasant, in loss as well as gain, in the dark day as in the bright, this is another matter, and it is what the apostle commands. Not that we thank God for evil as though evil were good, but that in the midst of every circumstance, whatever it brings, the soul turns to God in thanks, trusting the hand that holds it.

THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE

We do not always see how serious a thing ingratitude is, but the Scripture sets it near the very root of human rebellion. When they knew God, the apostle says of the fallen race, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. The unthankful heart is a darkened heart. Ingratitude is not a small failure of manners but a fundamental disorder in the creature toward the Creator, a refusal to acknowledge the Giver of every good, and it is named among the marks of the last and evil days, that men shall be unthankful, unholy. The two go together, the unthankful and the unholy, for a heart that will not give thanks has turned from God at the root.

So thanksgiving is not a nicety but a fundamental posture of the soul toward God, the acknowledgment that we are creatures who have received everything and earned nothing, that every breath and every mercy is a gift from his hand. To give thanks is to tell the truth about our dependence; to withhold thanks is to live the lie of the self-made and the self-sufficient. The thankful heart is the heart in right relation to God, receiving all as gift; the unthankful heart has quietly set itself up as its own provider and its own god.

THE SACRIFICE OF PRAISE

But how shall we give thanks in the hard things, when the heart feels no gratitude at all? Here the Scripture speaks of a sacrifice of praise. By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, the apostle says, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. A sacrifice is something offered at cost, given by the will when it does not come by the feeling. There is a praise that flows easily in the good times, and there is a praise that must be offered in sacrifice, wrung from a heavy heart by an act of the will, and this second praise, the costly one, is often the more pleasing to God, for it is the pure offering of faith when feeling gives nothing.

And the thankful heart is cultivated by the deliberate naming of mercies. Bless the LORD, O my soul, the psalmist charges himself, and forget not all his benefits, and then he names them, one by one, forgiveness and healing and redemption and lovingkindness. We forget so easily, and forgetting, grow unthankful. So the discipline is to remember, to count the mercies, to name before God the specific gifts of the day, and by the naming to stir up the gratitude that forgetfulness had let grow cold. Job, having lost all, could still bless the God who gave and took; Paul and Silas, beaten and chained, sang praises at midnight. The thankful heart is not the one with the easiest life but the one that has learned to remember God in every circumstance.

THANKSGIVING AND PEACE

And thanksgiving is the very doorway to peace, which is why the anxious soul is so often the ungrateful one. Be careful for nothing, the apostle says, but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds. With thanksgiving. The thanksgiving is the hinge on which the anxious request turns into peace, for gratitude fixes the eye on the Giver and his past faithfulness, and the soul that remembers how God has provided is freed from its fear of how he will provide. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, the psalmist says, and into his courts with praise, for thanksgiving is the very entrance into his presence and his peace.

WHERE ARE THE NINE?

The Lord once healed ten lepers at a word, sending them to show themselves to the priests, and as they went they were cleansed. Ten men, all healed alike, all given back their lives and their families and their place among men. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down at Jesus’ feet giving thanks; and he was a Samaritan, a stranger. And the Lord asked a question that hangs over us all. Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? Ten received the mercy. One returned to give thanks.

Where are the nine. It is the question ingratitude must always answer, for the nine were not wicked men; they were simply forgetful, hurrying on to enjoy the gift without a thought for the Giver, taking the mercy and neglecting the thanks. And this is the commonest form of ingratitude, not a deliberate refusal but a mere forgetting, a rushing on to use the blessing while the One who gave it is left behind, unthanked. Nine in ten of God’s mercies are received so, hurried past, enjoyed and not acknowledged, and the Lord still asks, where are the nine.

So gratitude is, at bottom, a kind of memory, the memory that recognizes the Giver behind the gift and turns back to thank him. The ungrateful are not those who receive nothing but those who forget the One from whom they received, who take the sunrise and the bread and the breath as though these came of themselves, and never turn back to give thanks. The grateful soul is the one who remembers, who traces every good gift up to the Father of lights and returns to him with thanks, who will not be one of the nine that hurried on.

And mark that the one who returned received more than his healing. To him alone the Lord said, thy faith hath made thee whole, giving him a wholeness deeper than the cleansing of his skin, a salvation the other nine, for all their healing, went away without. The returning to give thanks was not a mere courtesy; it opened the door to a greater blessing. So it is still. The grateful heart receives more than the gift, for in returning thanks it finds the Giver himself, and the Giver is more than all his gifts. Be the one who turns back. Do not be found among the nine.

So make thanksgiving a discipline and not merely a mood. Give thanks in every thing, in the hard as well as the pleasant, not for the evil as evil but to the God who holds you in the midst of it. Cultivate the thankful heart by naming the mercies, counting the benefits, refusing the forgetfulness that breeds ingratitude. Offer the sacrifice of praise when it costs, by the will when not by the feeling. And let thanksgiving be your doorway into peace and into the presence of God, for the unthankful heart is a darkened and an anxious one, and the thankful heart is at rest. In every thing give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.