This last weekend was Thanksgiving. Sorry, America, we have Thanksgiving too, and it is in October, as God himself intended. But there's a reason that we have it in October, don't you know, which is that Thanksgiving is a harvest festival, and as a harvest festival, it takes place in October, close to harvest time, not in November, when the field are frozen and white. But yes fine, dates aside, both sides of the border have a festival of Thanksgiving, and we turn to God and render thanks, perhaps one time all year, for the wonderful blessings we have received.
The bigger issue, of course, is that we are less grateful than we ought to be about every day. You can see that in the meals that we eat at thanksgiving. I'll explain what I mean. For Thanksgiving, you probably have a fairly typical spread - something like Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, brussels sprouts, buns, gravy, all that good stuff. But the thing is, no matter how big or small your Thanksgiving meal was, there's a good chance that it was bigger and richer than a standard weekend meal. And this is where we get to start examining things in detail.
For our average meal that we eat in this nation, is far more luxurious, far more decadent than most anyone in human history could have hoped to consume. For example, and I chose it because it is a well known example, the Romans in the time of empire are listed by Wikipedia as living 'very luxurious lives,' and yet their diet was 70% cereals and legumes. White bread was an extreme luxury, as the poor ate tough bread made from barley, not wheat. Sweetening was limited to whatever honey could be acquired, and cane sugar was an exotic ingredient. Not in absolutely everything as it is today. Food shortages were relatively common, and most things would have been tough and bland according to our modern palates, as salt in a pure form was a luxury. And this is with a people who lived luxurious lives. Can you imagine the poverty in diet of a nation, of a people that weren't luxurious? In the modern world, we are used to food being so hyper-palatable, as so easily hitting our bliss point, than even food that would have been standard fare not so long ago in human history is deemed unfit for human consumption. Consider the humble pumpkin, why don't you? These gourds are food, you know, and yet the average household here has them only as decoration, and tosses them out on the first of November. You are considered strange if you actually eat your jack-o-lantern, which was a food long before it was decorative.
So where to go if your normal meal is several hundred times more decadent than what humans have eaten for centuries? Well, there's really nowhere to go, if you see what I mean. The meal gets bigger and richer, with cabbage rolls and perogies, but ultimately, we fail to recognize that our standard meal is so rich and flaky that hundreds of generations would consider it beyond possible to have something so delicious, and yet we bolt that down almost without thinking. People who are asking about the goodness of God will frequently ask me why God sought fit to take their mother, father, or grandparent right when they needed them the most. Well, consider this, that the average life expectancy of people in Canada is now around 82 years, and for most of human history, it was far under 50. Again, on the topic of the goodness of God, people will ask why God took their pet dog from them when they were ten, without realizing that peak decadence is having an animal in the house that does no work at all. It isn't a hunter, a guard, or a shepherd, it's just another mouth that you brought into the house because it would be cute to do so. Most humans couldn't possibly conceive of having livestock in your home that does nothing for you except hoover up food and vet bills, but here we are.
So yes, we aren't good at considering all the blessings that we have, and as usual, once you forget the magnitude of the blessings that you are enjoying on a regular basis, then you will grow fairly cold in your celebrations of them. We are a species that tends to want to look for novelty, for the next thing, we consume and we move on. Most of all, though, we forget what we have just done with alarming speed. We forget the meal we have just eaten, the possessions we have just acquired, and the family we have just seen. The heart of the human grows cold unless it is enlivened purposefully with thanksgiving.
So consider the lepers who were healed by our Lord Jesus Christ. Consider the lepers who had to stand a long way off and shout to him, begging for salvation. They had to stand a ways off because they were unclean, they would contaminate people by being close to them. Their lives were reduced to existing in a world of only lepers, they were cut off from everyone, and suffering from a debilitating, disfiguring disease which would destroy them socially as well as physically. They genuinely needed to have healing which would have completely changed their lives in almost every way. Jesus did, of course, have mercy on them, and told them to show themselves to the priests, which they did. Upon doing so, they were healed. And this was a wonderful thing, to be sure. It was a wonderful thing to be healed not just of an infection or a disease, but to be healed of social ostracization, a wonderful, blissful thing. And after they were healed, they did what you would expect them to do, which was to, with overjoyed hearts, go back to their homes, their lives, their families and communities. It was a joyous time.
And that's the thing, is that frequently, we are too busy enjoying our blessings to be grateful for them. We have so much, all the time, that we regularly forget that these things exist, or are wonderful things. Our regular meals are so good that we don't think much of the fact that we have access to more than humans have ever had in human history. Our regular transportation is so good that we forget that not too long ago, people would never leave their immediate village. Our regular healthcare is so good that we've stopped getting vaccinated. You know the drill. We get really used to things very quickly, which is why the thanks that was rendered to the Lord was as important as it was. Not because he needed it, but because the leper did.
The grace you say before meals isn't so that God won't take your food away. That's not how that works. You don't say grace so that you'll get more food, or so that the food you have won't disappear. Rather, you say grace so that you are grateful with every meal for what you have, Thanksgiving dinner or not. You don't say your prayers in the morning and evening because if you don't God will take things away from you. Rather, you are there to be grateful so that you never get complacent with what has been given to you. If you return and give thanks, as the one leper did, then you will be brimming with joy with what you have, not always looking to what you can have next. Forgiveness, life, salvation, eternity, joy, health, family, clothes and shoes, all those things that are given to us from the Lord, who reminds us in his word that 'ever good and perfect gift comes from above.'
So don't get complacent. Be always filled with gratitude, and then you will truly appreciate all the things that God has provided.
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