Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 5:20
Many years ago, a man was shipwrecked on an island. Every day, he prayed that God would send someone to rescue him. During several weeks on the island, he had foraged around and built a hut, in which was his cooking fire, as well as the few things that he had in his pockets when he had been shipwrecked. One day he was some distance away from the hut looking for food when he saw smoke. Upon returning to the hut he discovered that the tiny dwelling had burned up. Disappointed and discouraged, he prayed, ‘God, everything I had was in that hut, and you burned it up.’ A few hours latter, a boat rowed up to the island, the men in it said, ‘We saw your signal fire and have come to rescue you.’ Sometimes blessings come so disguised that we forget to be thankful for them. Maybe we should learn to be thankful for everything, as our text instructs us.
There is the fable of a man who discovered the barn where the devil stores his seeds. The man discovered one very large pile of seeds, and asked, what are those seeds? The devil replied, those are seeds of discouragement. The devil said, I love to sow the seeds of discouragement every where I go. The man asked, do they always sprout? The devil replied, almost always. But there is one place where they cannot sprout, and that is in a grateful heart. Look around you and find the people who are always cheerful even when trouble and woes come along. Those people are thankful. They know that even the worst things that can happen to us are insignificant compared to the wonderful things that God has done for us. And if we understand that even the worst things that happen to us are the will of God, we can give thanks that the purposes of God are being unfolded. Oh, I know that some things are well nigh impossible to be thankful for. But the more we practice being thankful, the more contented and happy we will be, and the more God will be able to enrich our experiences.
If we are not thankful, it is because we fail to realise all that we have to be thankful for. Every day should be Thanksgiving Day for us, because, as Psalm 68:19 declares, Blessed be the Lord, Who daily loadeth us with benefits. Lamentations 3:22 and 23 remind us that it is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not; they are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness. For our salvation, for our daily preservation, for our glorious hope, there is so much to be thankful to God for that we should be perpetually employed in thanksgiving. And don’t forget to be thankful to all the wonderful people who are so kind and loving along the way.
Thank you for reading my message today. And thank the Lord for enabling me to write it. -Jim MacIntosh