What We Should Really be Thankful For

by Nov 26, 2008

This week you’ll take a quick break from the football and the gorging and the Black-Friday-ad-scanning to recite a quick prayer of thanks at the dinner table. If you’re a little more ambitious, you might even have each person around the table say what they are thankful for this year.

You’ll say things like “Family.” … “Health.” … “A nice place to live.”

All good things, and all worthy of gratitude to God. But if you want to shake things up a little bit at the dinner table, try saying “The fact that I’m not dead.”

Romans 6:23 says the only thing we’ve earned in life is death. Which means that anything we get in life besides death comes purely from the grace of God. Air. Food. Water. All these things are blessings from God, “for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45).

Still, these blessings can only stave off death for a few decades. The one thing we should truly be thanking God for this week is the way he enables us to beat sin, suffering, and death for good.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”