Diane and I wish you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving. Setting aside the normal daily routines, be filled with the peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7), experiencing again how good it is to be beloved children of God.
A quotation from C.S. Lewis. Senior devil Screwtape gives advice to young devil Wormwood. “The sense of ownership in general is always to be encouraged. The humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and in Hell, and we must keep them doing so.... We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun—the finely graded differences that run from ‘my boots’ through ‘my dog,’ my servant,’ ‘my wife, ‘my father,’ ‘my master,’ and ‘my country,’ to ‘my God.’ They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of ‘my boots,’ the ‘my’ of ownership…. We have taught men to say, ‘my God’ in a sense not really very different from ‘my boots…’ And all the time the joke is that the word ‘mine’ in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. In the long run either Our Father or the Enemy will say ‘mine’ of each thing that exists, and specially of each man. They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong—certainly not to them, whatever happens.” (C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, in For All the Saints, IV, 1157).
Thanksgiving is much more than being thankful for what we have, something anyone can do. Thanksgiving is a sense of our utter dependence upon our Father, as Martin Luther said, “We are all beggars; that is true.” Above all, Thanksgiving is heartfelt gratitude that the Spirit of Jesus makes us rich toward God. My possessions, my family, my work, my worries, my health, my future… Not mine. I am Thine. “It is well with my soul.”
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