As parents, Thanksgiving provides the perfect opportunity to show our children the true hope and joy found in giving thanks—even in seasons when we don’t feel particularly thankful.
We might not associate giving thanks with sacrifice, but the Bible and history provide ample instances when giving thanks was coupled with great tribulation and sacrifice. After a divisive election season and tragic natural disasters, it feels all the more appropriate to dig deeper into what genuine, active thanksgiving looks like.
Looking Back to Contextualize Our Present
It is not easy to focus on “thanksgiving” when we are experiencing hardship or turmoil. And yet, this is exactly what the Continental Congress did in 1777 as it was forced out of Philadelphia by the occupying British army. The delegates voted “to set apart Thursday, the eighteenth Day of December next, for Solemn Thanksgiving and Praise.” They focused on history, based on their “obligation to God for benefits received” and a reliance on Him to “continue to us the innumerable Bounties of his common Providence.”
The words of the psalmist in Psalm 116:12 and 17 come to mind here:
What shall I render to the Lord
For all His benefits toward me?
…
I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving,
And will call upon the name of the Lord.
Dwelling on the Faithfulness of God
By stepping back from any current trial and remembering God’s historical faithfulness with thanksgiving, we gain perspective and grow in faith. One man who did just that is Martin Rinckart, who served his small church in Saxony during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). In addition to a wartime refugee crisis, his flock also suffered the ravages of famine and an outbreak of the bubonic plague. Thousands died in his village and the situation was as bad throughout northern Germany, though Martin himself was spared. In 1636, the height of the crisis, he wrote this famous thanksgiving hymn, set to music by J.S. Bach:
Now thank we all our God
with heart and hands and voices,
who wondrous things has done,
in whom his world rejoices;
who from our mothers’ arms
has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love,
and still is ours today.
O may this bounteous God
through all our life be near us,
with ever joyful hearts
and blessed peace to cheer us,
to keep us in his grace,
and guide us when perplexed,
and free us from all ills
in this world and the next.
Martin Rinckart understood the sacrificial aspect of thanksgiving. He poured himself out on behalf of his “neighbors” with his feet of faith firmly planted on God’s work of salvation. Like Daniel, he trusted a sovereign God who is always able to deliver.
What did he sacrifice? By choosing to give thanks to the sovereign God in the midst of these crises, he “sacrificed” his own sovereignty; he admitted his own total inadequacy to “fix” the problems and simply went about loving his neighbor as best he could in the circumstances. Also, notice that his “thanksgiving” was active—done with “heart and hands and voices.” One way we express our thanksgiving to God for what he has done is by actively loving our neighbors. This, too, might be considered a “sacrifice.”
Inviting Our Children to Participate in Active Thanksgiving
As we approach this Thanksgiving season, let us remember with great thanksgiving the wondrous things God has done throughout history and continues to do today in our lives and around the world. Because of His character, we can approach the present and the future with peace and hope.
So let us sacrifice our own feeble attempts to maintain our independence and sense of control, and let us make that sacrifice active in the way we serve and love those around us. Even younger children can enter into this “active thanksgiving.”
A worthwhile dinner table conversation might include asking family members to think of a specific trial they faced at some point in the past and consider how, with the benefit of hindsight, they can see God’s provision for them in that trial. Then use those insights to motivate a specific act of service for someone you know as a way of actively expressing your thanksgiving to God.
This Thanksgiving, let us all reflect on the faithfulness of God through past generations and say with the psalmist,
I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving,
And will call upon the name of the Lord.
—Psalm 116:17