shawnethomas

When our son Michael was a little boy, he was VERY plain-spoken; he would just say whatever was on his mind. Thankfully he has grown out of that (somewhat!) as he has matured, but when he was little he just had no “filter.” One time he was sitting in the little seat in the grocery cart at Wal-Mart and a lady was being nice to him and talking to him, and Michael looked at Cheryl and said: “She’s talking to me. Tell her to stop talking to me!” (In all honesty, a lot of us probably wish we could tell people that at times!) Another time we had gotten together with Cheryl’s brother and his family at what we had been told was a really good bbq restaurant in Oklahoma City, but when they brought the food out, they had everyone’s but Michael’s. They apologized and said that his would be out in just a minute. I made a mental note that that might be hard for a preschooler to accept that everyone had their food except him, but I thought, well, we’ll go ahead and pray and maybe his food will be here shortly. So I said, “While we’re waiting, let’s go ahead and give thanks for our food.” Michael looked around at everyone’s food and said, “Why I should give thanks; I don’t have any food!”

Well I hope this Thanksgiving season you already know some good reasons why you should be giving thanks, but in case you’re short of ideas, let’s look together at Psalm 136, which I hope will help to “prime the pump” on reasons we have as God’s people to give Him thanks. Psalm 136 is notable for a number of things. The first thing most people notice is its repetition of the phrase: “For His lovingkindness is everlasting.” But it also significant in that it lists a number of things for which God’s people can be thankful.

Verse 1 begins: “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, for His lovingkindness is everlasting.” Continue reading →