Giving thanks to whom?

As I was checking the internet for anything of interest, I came across this interesting link: www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Personal-Prayer-of-Thanks-for-Thanksgiving Seeing this and reading the page that followed made me ponder the concepts of thanks and gratitude. Thanksgiving, as a national holiday, stems from the deeply seated need for people to recognize something beyond themselves, that we know in our hearts that we don't deserve all the good things in our lives...that they are a gift.

So we are compelled to give thanks. But to what or whom? See, that's where Thanksgiving breaks down for the atheist or the humanist. They have no anchor in this tempest. With no one there, they have nothing...no one to thank for the good, no one to question for the bad. Only themselves. Because if I truly believe there is no God, or that God has abandoned us, then Thanksgiving is simply a celebration of self. A day to exalt how great I am and to "thank" all those who bring pleasure to me. The "god" of the atheist is himself.

"They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen." (Romans 1:25) Other people count as created things. We have to place our focus on God first. If our vertical relationship is right (between God and us) then all our horizontal ones (between everyone else and us) will be as well.

Pastor Mike