In America, it’s Thanksgiving Weekend, a traditional time to give thanks to God for his providential care and blessings over the previous year. Interestingly, here in New Zealand we’re happy to indulge the associated Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, but a sense of thanksgiving to God is not usually part of that.
Scientists have long known that being thankful is good for both our mental and physical health. Whatever our circumstances, if we can find aspects of our life for which we are thankful, it lifts our eyes from our present difficulties to a more hopeful future. Cicero, the Roman orator, described a thankful heart as not only the greatest virtue, but “the parent of all the other virtues”: because, by practising thankfulness, we help foster other virtues such as humility, empathy, and gain a more balanced outlook on life.
But there is something missing in all that. While most people appreciate the benefit of cultivating gratitude in their lives; fewer are aware who they should be grateful to. The question is this: if gratitude is a sense of thanksgiving and joy that comes through the receiving of a gift, who is the Gift-giver? For Christians, the answer must ultimately be God and all that he has done for us in Christ: his sustaining providence and kindness, and his grace and mercy towards us sinners.
In our increasingly godless society, many people have cut the spiritual umbilical cord tying earth to heaven. They know they should be thankful to someone (or something?). But they are no longer able to point to God. Instead of gratitude, they cultivate a sense of self-importance and entitlement, and attribute good things happening to their own efforts luck, or the stars, the “universe”, or whatever.
Thanksgiving is central to the biblical understanding of what it means to worship God and confronts our society’s spiritual blindness and lostness. The Psalms repeatedly speak of coming into God’s presence with a sacrifice of thanksgiving (Psalm 50:14, 23; 95:2;100:4; 107:22; 116:17), while the Apostle Paul’s urges the Philippian Christians not to be anxious about anything but to include thanksgiving as they make their requests known God (Philippians 4:6).
I suggest that in our society’s godless, thankless, “me first!” culture, Christians openly and publicly offering thanksgiving to God – as the Lord of heaven and earth from whom all good things come – can be a prophetic, priestly, and indeed, a subversive Christian act. If so, what should New Zealand Christians be doing that we’re not currently doing?
Author: Dr Malcolm Falloon
Malcolm is an Anglican minister with over thirty years’ experience in pastoral ministry. He currently pastors Church of the Ascension in Auckland, which is affiliated with the Church of Confessing Anglicans. Through his work with the Latimer Fellowship (an evangelical society within the Anglican Church), he has experience in connecting leaders together for mutual encouragement and support in the Gospel. Malcolm is a keen student of New Zealand mission history, and has a PhD specialising in the Māori conversion to Christianity.
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