There and Back Again: Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving, and where I lack in gratitude the other 364 days of the year, I certainly try to make up for on this day. All morning, I have been thinking about the things I am grateful for.

I am grateful for Tilly, curled up on the bed with me. She and I have come a long way this year.
I am grateful for my family. We’ve survived a lot of ups and downs this year.
I am grateful for friends who have walked a difficult year with me.
And speaking of difficult years, I am grateful to have come out on the other side of cancer treatment as a survivor. For the third time.

These are the biggies. There are a million other little things I am grateful for every day; today it is flannel sheets and crisp air and the little hunger pang in my stomach and the prospect of a lot of food in my near future.

But I don’t want today to be just about the tangibles.

In her post, “Thanksgiving? Yes, Please,” High Calling blogger Christine Keegan grabs hold of a different kind of gratitude, one that doesn’t just look around but looks beyond.

So this Thanksgiving, I am thinking on the great provisions our family has received. Provisions that have little to do with home or food or clothing or the presence of others, though we daily give thanks for all those things. Each and every one of us are beneficients of the beauty around us- and we do well to name those things. Yet, when the beauty fades, He remains and therein is a provision that will never run dry. “Whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again,” He told the perplexed little woman at the well. And I find myself often looking at him with that same confused stare, “Really? Is it really going to be enough? You are really going to be enough?… even without all these things I’m pretty sure I need in order not to thirst?”

It’s about more than just counting my blessings. It’s about counting on my Blesser. Am I truly thankful for Him?

Last night at the Thanksgiving worship service at my church, we sang songs and read scripture and heard testimonies of gratitude. Over and over we thanked God for all that he has done, and I was reminded of the word “Ebeneezer” I had meditated on earlier this year, which means, “Til now the Lord has helped us.” I was filled with gratitude for all he has done.

But then we sang one more song, “I Thank You,” a song not just about what God has done in the past, but what he will do. In the future.

I’m sure there’s a risk involved in spending too much time being grateful for the future. In the meantime, I might miss a whole lot of right now to be thankful for. But maybe a better way to say it is that I am thoroughly grateful for hope, that wonderful reality that whatever happens tomorrow will be made good in the hands of a Redeemer.

Go THERE and visit Christine Keegan, and then come back HERE again!

Join me for regular jaunts around The High Calling network, randomly visiting fellow bloggers, soaking up their words and ideas, and then coming back here to write about them from my perspective.

Each Thursday, consider going “There and Back Again” yourself. It’s simple.

Photo by Stew Dean via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.