Pleased to have Turkey
I love Thanksgiving. Mainly because I love to eat, and on thanksgiving, well, I get to do a lot of eating. Typically on thanksgiving, some genius (I am being sarcastic here) in my family wants us all to stand in a circle, hold hands, and name one thing we are thankful for. I hate this. I want to get on with the eating and I also don’t want to be either too silly or too deep and emotional with my extended family. Call me crazy, but I am just not that close to all of them. I love them, but not close to them.
So needless to say I have already began thinking of things I can say today if somebody makes us do the circle. As I have sat here though and thought of all the things I am thankful for, I find myself a little teary eyed. The older I get, the more I find myself being sensitive. Maybe this is because some of the things I am thankful for aren’t really around anymore. I am thankful for my time with my grandfather Costner who died in 2001, I am thankful for old friends I hardly see or talk to anymore, and I am thankful for new friends that I am not able to be with this year.
Thinking about my friends and family, I can’t help but think of some times that I would like to have changed some things – either what I said or did. Believe it or not, I wasn’t a little angel growing up. My dad and I got into a lot of arguments and they usually ended in me calling him a name or telling him how much I didn’t like him. My mom always said that my dad and I were like two bulls in a small room (yes, she is country and so her metaphors are all country! Haha). Anyway, as I have continued to grow my dad and I still argue on occasion, but for the most part I have apologized and I think we have moved on past the really bad phase of my life.
It’s kind of weird that I am telling everyone this because it isn’t something I really like to talk about. I want everyone to think I am perfect and was the best kid growing up, yet both of those are far from the truth. As I was reading in Mark this morning, I read where just as soon as John finished baptizing Jesus, verse 11 says, “Then a voice came from heaven, ‘You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’” Now, I hate to say this, but this kind of depresses me. I wasn’t a perfect son, nor is any of us perfect, but it was to God’s perfect Son Jesus that God said He was pleased.
I guess it makes me wonder, do I have to be perfect for God to be pleased with me? Have you ever thought that? Or maybe I should ask this another way, Have you ever thought that if you were God you wouldn’t be pleased with you? I think if we are honest with ourselves, we have thought something like that at one point or another in our life.
The sad yet glorious thing about all this is that we don’t deserve for God to be pleased with us yet God is pleased and loves us anyway. In thinking about my own life, it is clear through my own actions that at times it seems that I don’t love God as much as I do myself. Often I sit around my house and do stuff I want to do instead of trying to get closer to God. I may pursue a girl, but my pursuit of God always seems to be inferior to my pursuing a wife.
But here’s the beauty of it all. God is still there and loves us and calls us His own despite our neglecting Him. One of my favorite parts in the Bible is Zephaniah 3. Here, Zephaniah is talking to the people in Jerusalem and is telling them to not be troubled. He basically says to them to not beat themselves up over all that has happened in their life, and to walk tall and proud for God is there. Verse 17 then says, and I paraphrase, God is in their midst, rejoices over them with gladness, quiets them with His love, and rejoices over them with singing.
God didn’t just rejoice for the people of old, He rejoices over us now. He loves us so much, even though He knows that the majority of our lives will be spent in some type of rebellion against Him. This thanksgiving, I am thankful for a lot of things, but I am most thankful that God cared for someone like me and you enough to send His son, the perfect sacrifice, to atone (clear) our sins and make us acceptable to God. By ourselves we please only ourselves, but through Christ we too can please God.