I hope your congregation will have a special Thanksgiving service later this week. Be it late Wednesday afternoon or evening or Thanksgiving morning, the special effort to gather for public worship is, let’s use appropriate imagery, a cornucopia of blessings. One benefit is personal, our own growth in faith.
Most Americans have been born and raised in the ways of western civilization. It’s the air we unconsciously breath, the assumptions we make without critical thought. A major characteristic of our culture is compartmentalization, a place for everything and everything in its place. That includes assuming worship is for Sundays and has limited claim upon us the rest of the week. Faith should be more personal than public, they tell us. Scripture, however, is quite clear. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37). That’s hard, at least for me. I can multitask, but many times on weekdays God isn’t present when I’m multitasking pressing needs.
You can’t compartmentalize the Lord’s Prayer to Sunday. “Give us this day our daily bread” is a petition for every day. When we pray that God’s name be hallowed, His kingdom come, and His will be done, we are praying for that to happen every day. How do you make a day holy when the alarm clock awakens you to the daily grind? How does His kingdom, His rule and reign dominate when you’re coping with the impersonal forces of the bureaucracy? How does His will become your will, you a person after His heart, when sin and temptation are all around? Answer: For as long or short as our schedule permits, we sanctify weekdays through prayer and meditation on the Word.
The weekend is a wonderful part of American life. We have more time to do the things we want, and for followers of Jesus that means gathering for mutual encouragement and spiritual growth on our heavenward way (Hebrews 10:25). So, when the national calendar gives us a long weekend, and does so for the virtuous reason of giving thanks, shouldn’t we gather in our churches as a witness, a testimony to one another and to our compartmentalized culture that God is the ultimate giver of all we Americans have? “Come to God’s own temple, come; raise the song of harvest home.”
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