I had a great idea for my Thanksgiving week blog. I was going to talk about how I am going to boycott every store that opens on Thanksgiving Day and do none of my Black Friday shopping there. Throughout the course of the column I was going to admit that I don’t participate in Black Friday anyway, not because of principle, but because I would rather take a beating than be in the middle of all that craziness. And then I was going to talk about how we should probably all lighten up on the things we let get under our skin. I’m really not a boycott person.
That’s what I was going to write about. And then my mind went down a rabbit trail. (Or maybe, for this week, we should call it a turkey trail).
I have spoken and written for years on my observation that Thanksgiving has become a second-class holiday for two reasons: (1) because it is difficult to commercialize and (2) because we are largely an ungrateful culture.
But today I am wondering WHY we are so ungrateful. Is it because we are spoiled and self-absorbed? Maybe. But I think it may also be a common underlying belief that nothing (and no one) is ever good enough.
I’m guilty of it myself. Much of my life is dedicated to helping leaders and churches be more effective. I’m constantly exploring and tweaking my own processes and habits, looking for the slightest improvement. I think that’s a really good thing if we are seeking to grow and to be lifelong learners. It’s a not-so-good thing if the message is “you need to get better and do better because right now you are not good enough.” If you would only pray for 15 more minutes, get involved in one more ministry project, give one more percent of your income to the church or a charitable cause, then maybe you would finally be good enough. And then you do those things and you find out that it still wasn’t enough. You’ve got to add something else. And if you aren’t good enough with all that you are doing, certainly no one else is good enough and the result is that it is awfully hard to be grateful in a world where nothing is ever good enough.
I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that neither you nor anyone else will EVER be good enough in a performance based worldview. If you are trying to make God or anyone else happy by what you do, it will NEVER be enough. The good news is that our lives matter enough to God that he sent Jesus in His perfect “more than enough” to meet us at our “not enough” and deliver us from a performance based worldview to a relationship based worldview.
The great English pastor, Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), said, “God is so boundlessly pleased with Jesus that, in Him, He is altogether well pleased with us.”
When God looks at us through our relationship with Jesus, He sees enough. How could we not be thankful about that?
Question: How does looking at life with a relationship based worldview help us to be more generally thankful?
Leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your perspective.
