Thanksgiving Through Tragedy; Pain with Purpose
PSALM 100:4-5
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good, and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.
Happy Thanksgiving! Today is a day we give thanks, we overeat, and we watch the Detroit Lions lose again…(why do the Detroit Lions play every Thanksgiving?? Anyway…)
You may be surrounded by loved ones on this day, catching up on life’s adventure, reminiscing on the “good ol’ days,” and you may be missing that person who was here last year but is not with you this year.
Giving thanks is usually an easy response when life is good, but what happens when life isn’t going well? How do you give thanks then? I don’t give thanks because I feel good, but I am reminded to give thanks to God because He is always good.
It’s not easy to say you are thankful for something that has made life difficult, but I have come to discover that the best place to take my difficulty is into God’s presence, and that is exactly what this Psalm encourages us to do.
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise,”
It’s easy to praise God when things are good, it’s easy to be thankful when things are good, but it is an entirely different response to praise God when the doctor reveals the test results are not all clear, when your spouse has lost their job, or when your loved one has passed away.
But we can remember this about God:
Our praise has the power to bring peace to our problem.
But how can we be sure of this?
We believe that our pain has power because our praise finds its place in the goodness of God.
His love is good and perfect, so it is more appropriate to praise God through my pain.
We know we can enter his gates with thanksgiving because God’s faithfulness continues through all generations! The faithfulness of God to get Noah and his family on the ark, the faithfulness to deliver the Israelites from the hand of Pharoah, the faithfulness to bring the Apostle Paul into the way of Jesus is the same faithfulness we can experience today!
No matter the circumstance, God says He is faithful, and if that is true, we have much to be thankful for today.
I have to remember that my pain is not about me on this day. My pain is a gateway that reveals the power of God to put my pain into perspective.
On this Thanksgiving day, allow the Lord to show you how good he is and how His presence gives purpose to your pain.
