What’s Happened to Thanksgiving?
America is no longer “One Nation Under God.” We’re a country whose spiritual life no longer centers on God or His church. Instead, we’re a country that huddles together in sports complexes to watch our modern day gladiators slug it out on football fields, baseball diamonds, basketball courts, and other sporting venues capturing the heart and mind of our nation.
We are also a nation that’s taken God, who helped found this nation, out of every aspect of our national life, where the Bible is being removed from our schools, and the Ten Commandments from our public buildings.
What we have today is largely the same thing that faced the Pilgrims back in England. The government is trying to control the church. Government officials are subverting the church’s ability to speak against abortion and sexual immorality.
And more recently we are seeing State and local officials restricting and prohibiting public worship while giving the green light for violent protest in our streets.
And those who influence our youth are anything but Christian, and our youth are following like lemmings over a cliff into the black abyss.
And when it comes to celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s no longer a celebration of thanksgiving for God’s blessings; rather it’s become a time of stuffing our faces and watching T.V.
Further, Thanksgiving Day is little more than a launching pad for Christmas. Is it any wonder that the day after Thanksgiving is called “Black Friday?” It’s because it helps retailers stay out of the red, that is, it helps business’ turn a profit.
It seems like America today is stripping away our ability to thank God for what He has provided. Christian missionary, Elwood McQuaid, said, “We are rapidly becoming a nation of ingrates – people for whom too much is never enough.”
Today we’re leaving God out of our Thanksgiving holiday and replacing Him with idols and gluttony.
We need to get ourselves back to where we were and give God thanks.
Dennis Lee is Senior Pastor at Living Waters Fellowship, Mesquite, Nevada. He presently has two books, “From Here to There: A Journey to Spiritual Transformation,” and “Wells of Living Waters,” He also writes a religious column for a local newspaper entitled, “Rediscover the Bible for Life,” along with daily devotionals and thoughts that he posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Living Waters Fellowship’s Website
Image by DEEPAI
I agree.
I hope you have a great week. Thanks for the comment.
That is spot on. The more God is taken out of every part of our society, thanksgiving becomes more and more unrecognizable every day and not just at Thanksgiving time. It’s seen in all the advertising with the subliminal message that “you deserve more”, leaving no room for gratitude to God for what He has given us. As believers we need to not allow ourselves to fall into the world’s trappings of ingratitude. We need to be able to say like the apostle Paul, “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.”
Philippians 4:11-12
Thanks for the follow-up and comment. It is appreciated. Have a great rest of your week. God bless