Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
There are many people who sincerely don't know what to be thankful for. For example, someone on Death Row facing certain execution. How could he exercise "thanksgiving"? Or someone diagnosed with terminal cancer? Or had a crippling stroke. Or suffered a severe accident? Or suffered a bereavement? There are so many tragedies. Can one always be thankful?
Take the person on Death Row: he or she can be deeply thankful for even a little more opportunity to open the heart to receive the grace of a Saviour. He can be thankful that his Saviour also suffered execution on His "death row," that line of three crosses. The believer's eternal life begins here and now. If you "die in the Lord" (Rev. 14:13) you have everything. Yes, celebrate "thanksgiving."
Fatal illness? You have Psalm 41, the promise that the Lord will "strengthen you upon the bed of languishing, and make your bed in your sickness" and you can pray, "Lord, be merciful unto me, and heal my soul" (vss. 3, 4). In other words, He will be closer to you than a full time R.N. on duty 24 hours every day.
Bereavement? You can remember that "Jesus wept" at a funeral, and weeps with you (John 11:35). One of His express promises is, "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you" (see John 14:18). Even in your tears you can be thankful. This will be especially dear to you in bereavement if you have consistently placed Jesus first in your life, closer even than your dearest loved one (marriage can be very dangerous if you idolize some human being "before Me," says the Lord, Ex. 20:3).
"Having food and raiment, let us therewith be content," says Paul (1 Tim. 6:8). Jeremiah's secretary, Baruch, was thankful in the disastrous fall of Jerusalem and the Captivity, that he had his life promised him "for a prey" wherever he might go (Jer. 45:5). When God's people suffered unutterably catastrophe, Jeremiah reminded them, "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed. ... Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord" (Lam. 3:22, 40).
Even the ability to feel thankful is a gift of God's grace. You learn it by reading the Bible; by acquainting yourself with the reality that the Holy Spirit wants to impress upon you. It's no joke and it's no impossibility, "In everything give thanks" (1 Thess. 5:18). If you understand the story of the cross, you'll find thanksgiving welling up in your heart forever!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: November 29, 1999.
Copyright © 2013 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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