Giving Thanks!

Today is Thanksgiving. The word rolls out of the mind and off the tongue almost too quickly, like a cliche. I think the meaning comes back a bit when you reverse the words that make up the one word: Giving Thanks seems to sharpen the focus. Thanksgiving is a great holiday of food, family, fun and football. Giving thanks takes it up a notch and we all can participate in an activity of expressing gratitude for life, love, and liberated souls thankful to the one true Lord. What a great preparation holiday for Christmas, when we greet God coming into earth to commence His promised rescue. I have been spending some time in Psalm 119 and hoped I'd find the word "thanks" in that psalm...but it wasn't there, at least in the New Living Translation. But I did find a psalm that is all about thanks.....Psalm 136!

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Psalm 136

¹ Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good!
His faithful love endures forever.
² Give thanks to the God of gods.
His faithful love endures forever.
³ Give thanks to the Lord of lords.
His faithful love endures forever.

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Psalm 136 would be a good one to read while the family is together because it recounts God's faithfulness across time...from Creation through the miracles of the Old Testament. Each verse carries an expression of thanks followed by the phrase, "His faithful love endures forever." Perhaps that is what we are most thankful for...that God's love to us has always been, will always be during life on the planet and then in the place where time has no dominion.

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Here's how Psalm 136 ends:

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²³ He remembered us in our weakness.
His faithful love endures forever.
²⁴ He saved us from our enemies.
His faithful love endures forever.
²⁵ He gives food to every living thing.
His faithful love endures forever.
²⁶ Give thanks to the God of heaven.
His faithful love endures forever.

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Giving thanks on Thanksgiving....seems an appropriate thing to do!

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Rob Smith