Who is our Benefactor?

“Thanksgiving Day is a harvest festival. Traditionally, it is a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude in general. It is a holiday celebrated primarily in Canada and the United States. While perhaps religious in origin, Thanksgiving is now primarily identified as a secular holiday.” So says Wikipedia, the cultural standard bearer of definitive information in contemporary culture. Secularization of American culture is most definitely a significant force in our land, but in thinking about our upcoming Holiday I gave a few minutes thought to the outworkings of secular ideology as it relates to thanksgiving in general.

According to the given definition, tradition has held that on Thanksgiving we express general feelings of gratitude. Many times this tradition is manifest in the form of persons in a gathering taking their turn expressing gratitude for that one particular thing for which they are most thankful in the past year. “My new set of golf clubs” says one, “Keeping my job in difficult times” says another, “Just getting together with family” still another. Around and around we go, expressing our gratitude. But gratitude to whom? Gratitude is not a general statement to no one in particular; rather it is an expression of thanks to a person.

These expressions of gratitude are very basic, but what about the most important things in life; namely our life and health. If we can be grateful for golf clubs or a continued place of employment or the opportunity for a family gathering, then how important is giving thanks for the breath we draw each day, waking up every morning, or the good health most of us enjoy to go about our daily activities. To whom do we give thanks for those things that we often express are most important?

This issue is especially poignant for me this year as my wife and I are expecting our fourth child. Ultrasound technicians have told us that it appears we will be having a healthy little girl (our first as we currently have three boys at home). The secularist would tell me to be generally grateful for that little girl, but it would seem they do not tell me to whom to be thankful. Based on the worldview behind secularism, however, they do give an answer. Secularism would tell me that my little girl is a new happy accident and my thanks should go to the beneficent hand of the evolutionary process of time and random chance. The point I wish to make, and the problem that secularism would have us ignore, is that without God, gratitude as a real response for things we would hold up as most important in this world is lost.

Perhaps instead of settling for a secular idea of an expression of “gratitude in general”, we should consider giving a more specific thanks as King David implored upon beginning a monumental building project, “But who am I, and who are my people, that we shoud be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. We are aliens and strangers in your sight, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope. O Lord our God, as for al this abundance that we have provided for building you a temple for your Holy Name, it comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you. I know, my God, that you test the heart and are please with integrity. All these things have I given willingly and with honest intent. And now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you. O Lord, God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Isreal, keep this desire in the hearts of your people forever, and keep their hearts loyal to you.”

During this season of Thanksgiving, let us all give some consideration not just to the act of being generally grateful, but to whom we are giving our thanks. It has been said that if we can tell our children to thank santa claus for putting goodies in their stockings, is there no one we can thank for putting two feet into ours? I cannot speak for another, but as for me and my house, from the most important things to the least, we give our heartfelt thanks not to a great perhaps of indifference, but to an infinite personal Creator God from whose hand all blessings flow.