Gratitude
As I scroll though Facebook I see friends putting out Thanksgiving AND Christmas décor around their home and the fun chatter about exactly when one should bring out the Christmas decorations. After all aren’t there rules about such things?
We all gasp as we shop and see each Holidays décor come into the stores we frequent seemingly sooner and sooner each year. I mean Christmas décor in September??? It happens and we shake our heads.
I’ve always had a fast unbreakable rule about when exactly my Christmas decorations should appear in my home…no sooner than the day after Thanksgiving. But I see friends and family who love this Holiday traipsing up their basement stairs or climbing down from the attic with totes of décor long before the appropriate date!
My feeling has always been that it feels a bit like we are ignoring Thanksgiving to get right into Christmas. I know that is not true because most people simply love Christmas and want to keep it up longer!!! So as I sat and pondered my “rules” I discovered a deeper rule I felt so much more important, to remember to be thankful. Ann Voscamp said, “Joy is always a function of gratitude and gratitude is always a function of perspective.”
This Holiday started hundreds of years ago by the Pilgrims as they set aside this day to give thanks for their new land and their many blessings. It was important to them and understandably so. Many of them had lost their very lives to come to this new world. But they paused and reflected and gave thanks. 1 Thessalonians 5:18a, “In every thing give thanks…”
It’s so easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the Holidays. I love it all…decorating, cooking and entertaining and enjoying family. Help me lawd! But…more than anything else, I see and deeply feel the need to remember and to give thanks, to be grateful and be in awe of how blessed and fortunate I really am.
It’s easy to get busy with dinner, going to different houses of family members etc. and lose the reason we are doing it in the first place. We have so much to be thankful for we should not overlook the importance of thanking our Father for so much.
Maybe it’s time we all slowed down, let go of less important things to focus on more important things, checking our hearts for gratefulness and being awestruck with our Lord and his graciousness to us.
It’s not about rules after all. It’s not about making it all look amazing or taste amazing although I love all of that. It’s about our hearts. God looks at our hearts not just our actions. Are our hearts full of business and frustration to get it all done or are they full of gratitude and wonder.
We live in a country full of freedoms other counties do not enjoy. We have running water, nice bathrooms, food, clothing, money most around the world could not imagine to make. Are we grateful or taking it all for granted?
These are the things I don’t want us to miss, as we get busy decorating and shopping for the next Holiday while rushing through another. Maybe take a long pause…purposely make some time to sit and reflect on just what it is to be thankful. Maybe text or call a few people that you are thankful for, make a list of things you don’t always remember to thank God for and read them to your group as you eat together this year.
Stop…think…reflect and express honestly from your heart this season how grateful and thankful you really should be for all that you have been given.
Colossians 3:17, “And whatever you do or say, let it be as a representative of the Lord Jesus, and come with him into the presence of God the Father to give him your thanks….”