Week of Thanks: My God

I am sure you have noticed by now that Thanksgiving is upon us.  As we enter into this season I have noticed that Thanksgiving has taken a back seat in our culture; this holiday is no longer about giving thanks but about buying stuff at a discounted rate.

Instead of spending a few posts ranting about all of this, I want to do the opposite.  I am going to give thanks, and I invite you along with me on this week long journey.  I plan to post once a day for the next week, each day describing something I am thankful for in my life.  These are not in any specific order – I am thankful for all of them (mostly) on an equal level.

I am thankful for my God

The God of the Bible is of utmost importance to me, I love God with everything I have.  I realize I just said that the order of these posts doesn’t mean a lot, but this one really is number one.

I am so thankful that God has not given up on me; times when I have messed up or struggled the most I still feel his love and acceptance.

I am so thankful that God loves me enough to not leave me the same.  I continue to see Him at work within me, helping me to be better at everything I do.

I am thankful that God tells me the truth about who I am, what I am doing right, and where I need help.

I am thankful that God desires and pursues a personal relationship with me, not just commitment to a religion.

I am thankful that I can trust God even when I don’t understand, because I know He wants the best for me.

I am thankful the God is in charge and I am accountable to Him.  I know that I will never be able to please everyone, and that I don’t have to.  The only person I HAVE to please is God himself.

All of my blessings come from God.

Thanksgiving….maybe not

I have not posted any “rants” on this blog.  I figure you all probably don’t really care that much about the things that make me mad or upset.  But I am about to break the no rant streak with this post.

I just returned from Walmart.  It is 10pm Thanksgiving night.  My wife and I walked into the store, fought our way through the crowds for a few minutes, then turned around and went home.  I am completely disgusted with the society I live in.

A new precedent has been made with this “black Friday”, because it isn’t on Friday anymore, it is on Thursday night.  Several stores have decided to infringe on the Thanksgiving holiday to grab a slightly bigger piece of the black Friday profits.  Not only does this decision make the employees of these stores lose their holiday, but it will undoubtedly keep crazed shoppers up the entire night fighting for deals.  There have been news reports of people camped out for literally days to be the first to get the next new video game system or flat panel T.V.

Are we all really so greedy and so materialistic that we will sacrifice a nights sleep, even weeks of our life sitting in the cold to save a few hundred dollars on the next new gadget that we won’t even care about by February?

As I walked through Walmart tonight, it completely breaks my heart to think how many of these people are trying to buy love from their kids and families.  How many of them are going to charge their three carts full of stuff on credit cards and still be paying on it when next year’s black Friday deals are tempting them.  How people can be so dedicated to stuff that is so meaningless and empty in the end.

My wife and I decided it was not worth waiting in line all night to save $20 on the few items we had planned to buy.  Thanks to Dave Ramsey and the Financial Peace plan, we have our cash ready to buy presents.  And we can pay the extra $20 for those things, have a great nights sleep tonight, and probably still have some left over to give away like we did last year.

I think the thing that bothers me the most is I don’t see an end to this trend.  Thanksgiving is NOT about turkey and family and football anymore.  It is now about greed, materialism, and buying happiness.  Someone posted on Facebook earlier today “Anyone else find it ironic that Americans spend the most money the day after they give thanks for what they already have?!”  Yes, yes I do.  But I don’t think they even pause long enough to actually give thanks.

I know what I am praying about tonight…