It amazes me sometimes how quickly a year passes. At one moment you find yourself in sweltering summer heat then you turn around and it’s the middle of November. November is special in its own right as it is a month, at least in America, that we set aside to be thankful. There is even a holiday we call Thanksgiving that is typified by overeating, football watching and the navigation of familial conflicts that have laid dormant for most of the year. Come to think of it, it’s kind of odd that we call this day Thanksgiving. Others sometimes take the opportunity afforded by this month of Thanksgiving to offer up things they are thankful for throughout the month. While this can be a good practice, and also one that yours truly is participating in, sometimes it tends to lean towards lip-service and I begin to wonder if it is a true expression of Thanksgiving at all.

Let me explain a bit further. According to Miriam Websters, thanksgiving is the act of giving thanks, a prayer expressing gratitude, or a public acknowledgment or celebration of divine goodness.I think the first part of that definition is a violation of all that I was taught in school, but the latter two pieces are a bit more important. Thanksgiving is a prayer or a public acknowledgement/celebration of Divine goodness. In other words Thanksgiving is a response. There is a parable Jesus tells in the gospel of Luke that I think might help to clarify this. He is addressing some of the piety he sees around him and he shares the story of two individuals praying in public. The first goes like this, “The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get’.” The latter was just slightly different, “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ – Luke 18:11-13

I find it funny that the Pharisee “thanks” God that he is better off than those around him. But then again I wonder how often my “thanksgiving” is similar. I do appreciate the blessings in my life, but does that truly call out a response of thankfulness from me? Or am I simply thanking God that I am well off compared to others around me? The tax collector maybe understood what he truly needed to thank God for; mercy. Grace is that which we ultimately should be thankful for. It is grace that is the primacy of our thankfulness and brings about the only real response of thanksgiving we can make. We show our thankfulness by extending that grace, mercy and love to others. We don’t thank God that we are not in there position, but rather we show our thanks to God by extending compassion to those who aren’t as well off as us. This is thanksgiving. This is giving out of our spirit of thankfulness. And this is what it means to be truly thankful.