During this season of Thanksgiving, I'm exploring what it means to be thankful. To understand something, I find it useful to first understand what it is not. When we look with pleasure at the circumstances in our lives, we can either feel thankful or lucky. To feel lucky is to believe that the pleasing circumstances came about by random chance. To be thankful, on the other hand, is to believe that there's someone to whom we should direct our positive feelings, our thanks. (To thank is what's called a transitive verb, meaning it requires an object of that thanks. Okay, grammar lesson is over.)
Most Christians believe in a God who has the power, the knowledge, and the love to be involved in every aspect of every moment of our lives. In theological terms, we believe in a Sovereign God. What we have in our lives is credited to Him. Many Christians, you'll notice will replace the word "lucky" with "blessed".
This may seem nit-picky to some, but I believe words should express what we truly mean and we should truly mean what we say. So in this season when many of us are openly expressing our thanks, let us not forget the object, or the "you" of our thanks, God.
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