So here we are, less than a week to Thanksgiving and 17 days into my series on Thanksgiving. You may have noticed I’ve not mentioned Thanksgiving a ton in this series. While that was not intentional by me, I feel it was intentional by God. When I was planning out this series, I had notes for posts that tied in different Thanksgiving traditions. I planned on making this a series bringing together the holiday and the Word. However, most of those topics are still sitting in my planning folder without much written on them.
Most days when I would sit down to write the next post, I would look through my list and ask myself, which one would fit best. Invariably, I would create a brand new post, because God had put something on my heart and in my mind and the words would flow out of me. I can usually tell when a post is the correct post to write because the words come naturally to me and not forced. They come out and onto the virtual paper without any effort at all.
So today, as I sit down to write this post, I had nothing. Nothing from my list nor anything that I felt God was leading me to write. But I started to think about this series as a whole, because I was worried that I had went down a different path than I originally set out to go.
But isn’t that how this relationship between us humans and God usually goes? We feel called by God to do something, we agree with that, then essentially tell God, “I got it from here!” And then we go our own way and potentially make a mess of things.
This series is no different. I felt God leading me to write this series during Thanksgiving and I said, “Good idea! Here are all the great posts I want to write.” I feel God looked at me and said, “Nope, I’ve got a better plan, HERE are the posts you will write.” And I could do nothing but comply, because when I tried to write what I wanted, the words wouldn’t come to me and it was a struggle, but when I followed God’s plan, the came naturally.
And as I write this post and reflect back on the first 16 days of this series, I realize that while they didn’t follow my originally plan of linking Thanksgiving to the Word, they do talk a lot about things that we can be thankful for.
Thankful that we have a great God that puts those opportunities to do the small things that make a huge impact in people’s lives.
Thankful that we can come to him in prayer and that those prayers are heard and effective, even if we don’t understand how.
Thankful that we can come to Jesus and have a little talk.
Thankful that when we stumble (and we will), we are still loved.
Thankful that we have a God that loves. Enough so that he died on the cross for us, even before we loved Him.
So yes, this series has everything to do with the spirit of Thanksgiving.
Exceptional Christian 