Bottom line up front: Thankfulness Only Makes Sense If There’s a Benefactor

Introduction: Does anyone else remember these words: “God is great. God is good. Let us thank Him for our food. By His hands, we are fed. Give us, Lord, our daily bread. Amen”? Now is the season in American culture where we’re entering the week before Thanksgiving. Lots of homilies will be preached; lots of lessons will flow outward; lots of talks about “the attitude of gratitude,” etc. will abound. Those are appropriate and fitting. But in what worldview? Only if there’s a sovereign Benefactor from whom all blessings flow.

That’s what the half-brother of the Lord Jesus, meant when he penned these familiar words: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation of shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures” (James 1:17-18).

The Alternative: The alternative is that we’re just cosmic dust—soulless, pointless, and to quote a famous song of yesteryear, “dust in the wind.” If all we are is dust in the wind, Thanksgiving doesn’t make much sense, does it? If we’re just molecules in motion, gratitude is a meaningless term.

Encouragement: In the biblical worldview, however, Thanksgiving makes perfect sense. Why? Because mankind is not mere cosmic dust. In fact, all people everywhere, from conception to natural death, are created in the image of God (imago Dei). God is our Benefactor. To quote James, He “brought us forth.” In God, “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). As the Lord Jesus taught in Matthew 10:31, “Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Thanksgiving makes perfect sense in the biblical worldview because the harvests we reap are due to the grace of God. The fact of seedtime and harvest is due to the grace of God. “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). Thanksgiving makes perfect sense because we’re designed to acknowledge the One who provides it all, the means by which we can demonstrate gratitude, and the message of thankfulness for God’s grace towards us in the revelation of Himself and His salvation.