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Sometime in early July, you can begin to catch the first glimpses of Halloween, though at that time it’s nearly four months away.  As All Hallow’s Eve approaches, you’ll begin to notice another holiday competing for attention, as the first Christmas ornaments and cards begin making their appearances.  Perhaps two weeks after Halloween, some people and organizations are in full swing with Christmas, having already decked their roofs with lights and got the Christmas tunes cranked up.

If you look very carefully among all of the spooky images and glittering lights of Halloween and Christmas, you’ll see just the faintest hints of a holiday set aside to be thankful.  Unfortunately, Thanksgiving never truly gets time alone in the limelight.  During the week of Thanksgiving, the competing voices of other holidays die down a little as people make plans and preparations for the Big Feast, but those voices are never totally gone.

What does this say about us?  Are we really all that thankful?  Have we forgotten how much we really have? Sadly, even Thanksgiving Day is now being intruded upon by another “holiday”: Black Friday.  It’s ironic that we set aside a (portion of) a day to stop and be thankful for what we have and then rush out to the shops in a frenzy as though we really don’t think we have enough after all.

Over and over, God’s Word encourages us to be thankful, and to even be overflowing with thanks.  God never asks us to have attitudes that have no basis in reality.  He asks us to be overflowing with thankfulness because we actually have reason to be.  Some of those reasons are material, but the greatest reasons are not.

So, here are a few questions – and take some time to actually think through these:

For what are you most thankful?

Are there things in your life that you don’t stop to be thankful for, but which you’d miss if they were suddenly gone?  Your house?  Your bed?  Health? Clean, drinkable water?  The ability to see and hear?

Go back to the first question.  Your answer to that will tell you what you truly value, and what you value most is what you’ll keep trying to get more of, and will determine that amount of thankfulness you have. Whether or not what you value most is actually what is truly most valuable, you really do have full access from God’s abundance to all of the things that matter the very most.

If you don’t find that you have enough thankfulness in your heart for a lifestyle of thankfulness, let alone a single holiday, then stop to think about that, and to ask yourself why that is the case.  Then ask God to give you eyes to see the abundance that He offers to you.

Things like food, shelter, and comforts are gifts from God, to be received every day with thankfulness, but someday, those things will be gone.  The greatest cause of our thankfulness is something that is worth far more than all other comforts and needs, and it is something that we have been granted full access to, for all of eternity, beginning now.