Thanks-O-Meter: What’s Your Score?
Radio Commentary, 90.7, 91.7 New Life FM, November 28, 2014 – By Sue Ella Deadwyler
The other day I didn’t have to slow down in a school zone, because the school was closed for Thanksgiving week. But the sign outside that elementary school didn’t mention Thanksgiving. It simply stated that school would be closed from the 24th through the 28th.
How strange that the sign did NOT explain WHY the school was closed for five days. There was no mention of Pilgrims or a school play or a teacher’s work day.
It made me wonder how the closing had been explained to the students and parents and whether the principal and teachers had been told to avoid mentioning Thanksgiving – a legal holiday, officially declared for the entire nation to observe God’s blessings. Within those words lies the answer. Observing Thanksgiving as a Christian observance is being boycotted!
The word Thanksgiving is in the Bible 28 times, first in Leviticus and last in Revelation. It means to “extend a hand to God, to revere or worship Him.” That definition reminds me that a warm handshake is often used as a gesture of person-to-person gratitude. Could that be a simple picture of the response our Lord Jesus Christ expects from us?
So, let’s take a test I’ll call the “Thanks-o-meter Test.” Listen closely and score yourself. The questions are from Bible verses that mention the act of thanksgiving.
On Thanksgiving Day, did you offer thanks to God? If you did, your thanks-o-meter just inched upward. If you praised and magnified His Name, it went up again. Did you come before His presence with joy? Did you serve the Lord with gladness and singing, even silently? Were you thankful unto Him? Did you call upon Him because He is good, because His mercy is everlasting and His truth endures to all generations? Did you reverence Him? Did your thanks-o-meter advance on Thanksgiving Day … or is it advancing today?
Thanksgiving, as used in the Bible and for the national holiday, actually, means expressing gratitude to God. The last mention of thanksgiving in the Bible occurs in a future scene in Heaven, as angels praising God proclaim, “Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen”
We should praise Him even more than the angels do. Not only did He create us, He died to REDEEM us. Angels can’t say that! So, the next time you shake someone’s hand, remember this. The definition of Biblical thanksgiving is to extend a hand to God in reverence and worship. Maybe we should take a Thanks-o-meter Test every day. For Georgia Insight I’m Sue Ella Deadwyler, your Capitol correspondent.