Thoughts on Thanksgiving

 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Rom. 15:13

All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. 2 Cor. 4:15

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful. Heb.12:28

The faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel.  Col.1:5

Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the Auschwitz death camps, describes how holding onto hope was literally a life-or-death choice. Those who lost hope, he said, developed a certain look in their eye, a fatalism that inevitably ended in death. They experienced an “existential vacuum” — his term for a complete loss of meaning, a loss of hope, a sense that nothing really mattered any more. Once they had that look, several days later they were dead.

Paul states in Romans 15:13 that we as believers don't just have a tiny bit, a pinch, a modicum of hope - we are overflowing with hope. What is that hope in? The surety of the return of Christ. The certainty that He is preparing a place for us. The confidence that as Brandon Lake says in his song Sevens, "We're gonna' make it out alive." This is the Blessed Hope that Christians have sung about for years. This is the underlying message of so many "negro spirituals" that kept their hope going in the midst of terrible hardships.

 The writer of Hebrews says that this hope in Heaven causes us to be thankful. In fact three times in his epistles Paul writes about our thankfulness being overflowing. It's interesting that Paul says hope overflows and thankfulness overflows. It seems they are connected.

 We watched a Netflix Christmas movie last night called Champagne Problems. It dealt with a woman from America going to a vineyard in France, a producer of Champagne, and attempting to purchase it for her company. As she left in apparent failure, she recounted her problems to a desk clerk as "Champagne problems". When pushed as to what that meant she stated that champagne is uncorked at celebratory events - weddings, New Years, parties in general. Yes, she had problems, but they were in the backdrop of finding herself, love, and all the good things that happened in Paris.

We, as Christians, because of our hope (confident assurance) of Heaven where we will be spraying Champagne like the World Series winners, go through this life overflowing with thanksgiving and the Eeyore woe is me of our problems should amount to no more than "champagne problems." Let's be known as thankful people not gripers. Happy Thanksgiving. Cheers!