This week, our country celebrates a uniquely American holiday. Thanksgiving is full of honored traditions and predictable events. For instance, this coming week, we know the president of the United States will be given a turkey which he will ceremoniously pardon and protect from execution. We know that the day before Thanksgiving will be the busiest travel day of the year. And that on Thanksgiving morning, traditional high school rivalries will be played out on the football field.

We know that this week, newspapers will be thick with advertisements beckoning us to do our Christmas shopping. And that the day after Thanksgiving will be one of the biggest shopping days of the year.

We also know that in the coming week, in one form or another, nearly everyone in this country will sit down at home or at a restaurant, in prison or in an outreach mission, and eat dinner together, regardless of their faith traditions. And we know that many people will pause – perhaps for the only time during the year – to give thanks to God.

For that’s what Thanksgiving is all about; it’s the day on which we are reminded to give thanks, and to direct our thanks to God, from whom comes “Every good and perfect gift.”

But Thanksgiving has become increasingly lost in the midst of other more consumer-oriented holidays. Oldies 103 moved to their “all Christmas songs format” at the beginning of November, and last night on the news, a reported noted that Thanksgiving has been lost under an avalanche of Christmas decorations and activities. And so, how do we make Thanksgiving more than just a stopover on the way from Halloween to Christmas? We can start by making thanksgiving not just a day on the calendar, but a way of life; we can start by choosing an attitude of gratitude throughout the year.

Christian preacher and author Charles Swindoll writes:

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life… We cannot change our past … we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude … I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. …We are in charge of our attitudes!"¹

Recent studies suggest that there may be a direct connection between an attitude of gratitude and one's state of health – not merely emotional well-being, but actual physical health. Choosing to be grateful is recommended as an antidote for stress, and it can result in higher levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism and energy. ²

In Judaism and Christianity, the Psalms are the vocabulary of thanksgiving. In that sacred prayer book, we find the spectrum of human emotion; it’s all there – doubt and faith, and grief and hope, as well as praise and thanksgiving. Listen again to these words from Psalm 95, on which this morning’s Call to Worship is based: “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord… Let us come before him with thanksgiving… In his hand are the depths of the earth, the mountain peaks belong to him, the sea is his…” In this prayerful poem of praise, the psalmist is choosing an attitude of gratitude for the wonders of God’s creation.

Like the Israelites before them, the Pilgrims ventured forth to a new land, and they were undoubtedly filled with uncertainty. Perhaps their only assurance was knowing that God was going with them. That first winter in Plymouth almost destroyed their colony; only 50 of the original 103 lived through it, and the survivors were weak and sickly. But they received help from the Wampanoags. One of them, Squanto, had learned some English from earlier visitors, and he helped the Pilgrims survive by showing them how to plant and tend corn. It was the Indians and the Indian corn that saved them that first year, and the Pilgrims knew it, and despite their losses, they chose to be grateful and paused in the midst of their hardship for a feast to express their gratitude to God and to the Indians who saved them.

Paul displays an attitude of gratitude in his letter to the Philippians. His first words in the epistle are, “I thank my God every time I remember you…” And in this morning’s scripture lesson, he writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always… In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” Paul’s words are certainly poetic, but they take on a deeper meaning when we realize that he wrote them from prison. Despite his circumstances, he chose to thank God in everything he did; he maintained an attitude of gratitude.

But there are many times when it can be difficult to be grateful. It is hard to give thanks when we are sick; when we are denied something which we had set our heart on; when we lose something or someone we love; when we go through the deep waters of life. It is hard to be thankful when we look at our world, at the war in Iraq which has now claimed more than 3,800 American lives; at the on-going threat of terrorism; at the partisan and polarizing politics of the presidential campaign. For some of us, it may be difficult to get our hearts and minds into an attitude of gratitude this season.

We can learn much from the story of a man named Martin Rinkart from Eilenburg, Germany. He was the son of a poor coppersmith, but managed to work his way through school and became a minister in his hometown parish in the early 1600s. Shortly thereafter, what has come to be known as the Thirty Years War broke out, and his town of Eilenburg was caught right in the middle. Then the massive Bubonic plague that swept across the continent hit Eilenburg; people died at the rate of fifty a day, and the man called upon to bury most of them was Martin Rinkart. In all, over 8,000 people died, including Rinkart's own wife. His ministry spanned 32 years, and it was marked by nearly constant devastation. We could understand if Martin Rinkart ended up an embittered and cynical doubter of God’s goodness. But listen to these words he wrote:

Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices;
Who wondrous things hath done, in whom his world rejoices.

Rinkart chose an attitude of gratitude, despite the great tragedy of war, the catastrophe of disease, despite the heartbreak and sorrow which engulfed his town and his life.

The late priest and writer Henri Nouwen wrote: “The choice for gratitude rarely comes without some real effort. But each time I make it, the next choice is a little easier, a little freer, a little less self-conscious. Because every gift I acknowledge reveals another and another until, finally, even the most normal, obvious, and seemingly mundane event or encounter proves to be filled with grace.” ³

And so, whether our lives are full of joy or we are in the midst of heartache and sorrow, let us adopt an attitude of gratitude, not just this coming week, but all days of our lives. Let us remember to say thank you, God, for all we have; thank you, God, for food and shelter; thank you for love and friendship; thank you for life itself; thank you for bringing us through the dark nights of our soul; thank you for sustaining us even when we walk through the valley of the shadow. And let us say thank you, God, for letting nothing, nothing separate us from your love in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

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¹http://www.lexibridges.com/strategies.html
²http://www.stressinstitute.com/StressAndWorkLifeBalanceTips/StressReductionTips.aspx
³Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1994), pp.85-86.