Choosing a Thanksgiving Focus

Over the weekend we made it through another Halloween (my least favorite holiday) and are now in the month of Thanksgiving (one of my favorite holidays)!  Today I’ve been working on the last preparations for next Sunday morning’s worship session at our church’s annual women’s retreat.  When I lead worship, it is important to me to attempt to integrate the songs that are sung with the Word that will be brought by the speaker.  There is always a special sense of the Spirit’s presence when music and God’s Word are working together.

I’ve found it easy to be thankful today – because the focus of next Sunday’s session is on God’s faithfulness and his love.  While God’s interaction in our lives doesn’t always look the same, he is always faithful – no matter what we do that is unfaithful.  Faithfulness is built into God’s character, so it is not possible for him to be unfaithful.  I love the way the old hymn, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, describes it: there is no “shadow of turning” with God, and he never changes.  He has given us the seasons, sun, moon, stars, and all of nature to attest to his faithfulness.  Besides that, he has pardoned our sin and gives us peace, strength, hope, and his own presence – as well as many more blessings.  If we’re focused on his faithfulness, we can’t help but be thankful!

But God isn’t just faithful – he’s also loving: “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).  And John 15:13 tells us that there is no greater love than being willing to die for someone else.  The kind of perfect love that God has for each of us is really hard for us to grasp, because we are hopelessly caught in an imperfect world – and none of us is capable of loving the way God does.  But Romans 8:38-39 helps us to recognize that God is also faithful in the way he loves us:

“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.  Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today not our worries about tomorrow – not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.  No power in the sky above or in the earth below – indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

As we head into this season of holidays that should be about God, let’s choose to focus on his faithfulness and love.  Even if our lives are sometimes filled with difficulties that make it hard to be thankful, we can always choose what we focus on.  Taking every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5), I choose to focus on my God and not life’s difficulties.