Thankful for More Than Pumpkin Pie

Here we are at the end of the year, a lot to reflect on, a lot to be thankful for, and one of those things is Thanksgiving itself. Who’s excited about Thanksgiving?

There are all kinds of reasons why we look forward to Thanksgiving. We’re thankful for Thanksgiving. Sometimes it’s for the turkey. Maybe you are the side dish person and you’re excited about the potatoes and the casseroles. Oh, and then the desserts!

I don’t care if you have anything else, just bring on the pumpkin pie. On Thanksgiving, it’s got to be pumpkin pie with lots of whipped cream. Just has to be. There’s no way around it.

Maybe for you it isn’t the food. Anyone ready for Thanksgiving Day football? For me, sports ended when the World Series ended for the year, but I know so many are thankful for grid iron contests on Thanksgiving Day.

And then the gatherings themselves where we enjoy and consume all the things. Maybe we celebrate for days. Maybe we gather with loved ones. Maybe we gather with not-so-loved-ones who are in our way as we try to get to the great Black Friday sales.

(Amazon is certainly thankful that day, at least.)

We’ve named off all the essentials of Thanksgiving, right? Have you noticed something I’ve left out of all that?

Thankfulness. Yeah, thankfulness.

Now, sometimes we realize that and say, “okay, when I get together with family and have our Thanksgiving meal, we’ll talk about what we are thankful for.”

We rattle off some things. We mention family and friends. We could list out all these wonderful things that God has blessed us with. The key thing that often gets forgotten, though, when we hear in our culture what we’re talking about just now, is those words: “that God has blessed us with.”

It’s good that we take a step back and reflect on what we have and how we’re grateful for it. But, if we do that and we don’t move on to the subject of the one who’s given it to us, we’re missing out on the real heart of Thanksgiving.

It’s not enough to say, “I am so thankful for my family and for my friends and for this pumpkin pie in front of me.” We need to make sure that we’re thanking the God who gave us that pumpkin pie, and those family and those friends. (Not necessarily in that order.)

How many times do we turn Thanksgiving more into, “I’m going to tell the people around me how I’m thankful for them?” I don’t want to diminish that in a sense: it’s a good thing to tell our loved ones that we’re thankful for them. I’m not here to throw a bucket of cold water on that.

But, in a secular culture, as we celebrate Thanksgiving, a lot of times, that is full stop what we’re doing. And it ends up encouraging a bit of vague gratefulness mixed with mutual admiration.

We end up being ironically self-focused — “here’s what I love to have and those I love being around.” It is important we thank God for the blessings in our lives, not just thanking vaguely, generally, “the Force” of the universe (or “to whom it may concern”) for blessing.

Ironically, I can’t say in my life I have ever pointed to President Washington as the person I go to to understand theology, but his declaration for the first national day of Thanksgiving is striking.

He didn’t mention any football. He didn’t mention pie. He didn’t mention turkey or feasting. What did he mention?

“That we may then unite in most humble offering of our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and ruler of nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions. To enable us, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually to render our national government a blessing to all people.”

Notice he takes it in a very different direction. Thanksgiving is often about “what’s in it for me” and — maybe — being thankful for “what’s in it for me.”

For the first president? “Let’s take a day to confess our transgressions.” Imagine that on a Thanksgiving card at Hallmark: “Isn’t it lovely that we get together and confess how we sin individually and as a nation?”

Doesn’t sell very well, does it?

But, that’s where President Washington went. And, he had the right focus when he did.

He takes it from there to say that we could be spending that Thanksgiving time in prayer that God would direct us both individually and as a nation on how we can be a blessing to others. Not to ourselves, not even just to our nation, but to all people.

And there in that, we see a better picture of a true Thanksgiving than the way we often approach the holiday or our lives in general. Our lives are not lives meant to find ways to have blessings come upon ourselves.

We keep in mind the who of Thanksgiving — the God who provides and saves. If we do that this year, then Thanksgiving won’t be merely a point to close the book on a year’s highlights, but a launch point to share blessings with everyone we encounter in the year to come.

An excerpt adapted from Tim’s sermon to Little Hills Church on November 24, 2024. You can find the sermon meditating on Psalm 95 here.