“Thanksgiving is a posture of both mind and heart where we recognize how terribly fortunate we are, and how much we’ve been blessed despite the fact that we probably haven’t been the blessing that we should have been.”
“Thanksgiving is coming to the life-altering understanding that truly precious things can’t be owned anyway. And the wonder of it all is not only realizing that we can’t own them, but it’s realizing that we don’t have to expend the energy in the maintenance of them in order to enjoy them.”
“The longer I’ve walked with God the more I’ve realized that being thankful is vigorously celebrating what’s right in the world while anticipating that what’s wrong with it will soon follow suit.”
“Thanksgiving reminds us that no matter what befalls us in life, we can take the charred remnants and we can reconstruct a life unimaginably richer than that from which the shards and pieces fell.”
“With God, what’s possible will always be infinitely greater than what we believe to be probable. And we can be thankful that such a reality means that where we see a wall, God wishes to unveil a horizon.”
“Thanksgiving is an attitude that must be rooted in the ‘gift of life’ if we ever hope to be thankful for the ‘gifts’ of life.”
“Being thankful for something instantly grants that thing a depth it would not have had were I not thankful for it. And while I can certainly live without having had that kind of depth, in turn I will have died without ever having had any kind of life.”
“I am thankful that I can be thankful, for if thankfulness did not exist my heart would be irretrievably imprisoned by the crazed twins of acquisition and possession, and my soul would exist as a forever slave to greed.”
“Thanksgiving is not some formulaic action based on a tedious ledger that neatly tallies everything I have received so I can determine if being thankful is warranted or not. Rather, it’s appreciating the fact that I have already received the privilege of living life which in and of itself will fill the whole of my ledger for the whole of my life.”
“I am most thankful for what I don’t have, for had my life’s wish list been filled in the manner I had chosen I would be steeped in meaningless trinkets verses bathed in God’s treasures.”
“We recklessly attempt to disguise our ‘greed’ by dressing it in the garb of other nobler ideals such as ‘rights’ and ‘privileges.’ Yet, if we dare dress ‘greed’ in an authentic sense of thankfulness, greed will suffocate within the folds of that very clothing.”
“To be thankful when my world lays in ashes long gone cold is to finally understand that ashes are the raw materials from which God shapes dreams infinitely grander than whatever the ashes were before they were ashes.”
“Thankfully, what God does is always bigger than our ability to contain it.”
“In my desperation, I have finally discovered that the only way that I can begin to fill the gaping hole within me is to be thankful for what’s there, and not angry for what’s not.”
“Because thankfulness is the tonic that always cures the cancers of greed, envy and jealously, it should be taken in liberal doses daily.”
“To savor the simple privilege that every day I have a sunrise to bathe in, a storehouse of opportunities to romp through, the thick wrap of relationships to keep me warm, a God who meticulously tends to every detail round about me, and it all costs me not a dime. What madness would keep me from being eternally thankful for all that?”
“Thankfulness allows us to walk through a world inundated by opportunities and possessions, being slaves to neither.”
www.craiglounsbrough.com. Used by permission.
