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Thanksgiving
For the Lesson titled “Thanksgiving” 2013
This special time of year is here again! As a person not from the United States, I have always been so grateful that Mary Baker Eddy took the idea of Thanksgiving beyond national boundaries, and through the Thanksgiving Bible Lesson and church services invited people all around the world to join together in giving thanks to God.
This year’s Bible Lesson is a heartfelt celebration and affirmation of God’s goodness. The English word God is identical with the Anglo-Saxon word for good, so there are accepted grounds for identifying the name God with divine goodness. To think of God and good as one and the same opens the doors of thought to a wide vista. Allowing the idea of good to develop in thought is a powerful prayer, especially when one is faced with events that may argue to the contrary. We’re invited to ponder good, to live with it, to love it, to recognize every expression of it—and to thank God for it, because it’s the direct evidence of His presence. As the Apostle Paul’s First Epistle to the Thessalonians says, “In every thing give thanks” (5:18, citation 7)—yes, in every single situation we can see God’s goodness fly in the face of adversity and overcome it.
Sometimes the simplest parables point to the deepest truths. The ripening of a harvest, the provision of food, the flowing of water, are all cause for gratitude. But even beyond the human need being met, they illustrate the overflowing abundance of good which is the natural state of God’s spiritual creation, and which is the actual truth underlying all things. Gratitude for this spiritual fact takes us to the very heart of divine Love. Jesus proved this through a radical act when he gave thanks before the few loaves and fishes became the bountiful feast for several thousand hungry souls who had gathered to listen to his teachings (see Matthew 15:32–37, cit. 12).
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