With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the LORD:
He is good; His love to Israel endures forever." Ezra 3:11
Depending upon which set of historians you might choose to debate, the Thanksgiving holiday is between 387 and 443 years old, and took place either at the Plymouth Plantation or in St. Augustine.
To borrow a well-worn phrase from my kids..."whatever".
We may have named a day for it, but we did not invent the giving of thanks. God commanded thanks in the Law; not because He needs our gratitude, but because we need to be grateful. Our whole lives can be changed if our hearts become grateful, first through practice, possibly, but then through actual change.
And so the tradition of a nation giving thanks goes back, past 1621, past 1565. Let us look at today's verse, which predates Christ by some four centuries. With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the LORD: He is good; His love to Israel endures forever. So, you might ask, what does Israel and God's love for it, have to do with us? We are the Nation of Israel! I do not want to get bogged down in semantics (or Semitics) here, but one needs just Read Romans 11 to understand that we Gentiles, through Christ, are grafted into His chosen people.
And so, His love to us endures forever.
Therefore, we should sing to the Lord, with praise and thanksgiving.
What a tradition!
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Questions:
1. How do you show thanks to God?
2. How often?
3. How about right now?
INTERESTING THOUGHTS:
"Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself,
you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself."
you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself."
Blaise Pascal
Pastor Jim Dorton
Wyoming UMC112 Broad StreetWyoming, De 19934(302) 697-6651jdorton@yahoo.com
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