Overwhelmed by Thanksgiving

I have a couple of dear friends who emailed me this week asking if there was a Thanksgiving blog entry in the works. There wasn’t, but I didn’t want to let my faithful readers down. So I started asking God for a heart message about this, my favorite holiday.

Oddly enough, what I got wasn’t a neatly wrapped blog about all of the reasons I am (or should be) thankful this Thanksgiving, but rather this one question: Why am I not more thankful the other 364 days of the year?

I revisited my Thanksgiving post from last November because I didn’t want to repeat myself, but I can’t help it. There are two perennial truths that are unavoidable:

1. "From each individual breath we take to our very lives, and everything in-between...it's all from God, and it's all good.”

2. “I pray we will all have thankful hearts, each and every day.”

It appears that change for change's sake is a bad idea when it comes to gratitude. I still haven’t answered the question though. Why am I not more thankful the other 364 days of the year?

I am glad every day for so many things in my life…so many blessings straight from the hand of God. But I know I could be still more grateful if I only recognized that all of the good things in my life—every good thing—is from God. They’re not by accident, and they're certainly not by my efforts. His goodness abounds, and it is almost too much to wrap my mind, much less my heart, around.

So this year my prayer for myself, and for you, is for an awareness of the gifts in every moment, and that we may be overwhelmed with Thanksgiving!

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. ~ James 1:17 (NIV)