Thanksgiving Day

Now here's an interesting take on the need for gratitude (aside from the hundreds of biblical injunctions of course). The magazine Inc. ran an article titled "Listening to Complainers Is Bad for Your Brain." Apparently neuroscientists have learned to measure brain activity when faced with various stimuli, including a long gripe session. And the news isn't good.

The article summarizes the research:

"Being exposed to too much complaining can actually make you dumb. Research shows that exposure to 30 minutes or more of negativity—including viewing such material on TV—actually peels away neurons in the brain's hippocampus. That's the part of your brain you need for problem solving. Basically, it turns your brain to mush."

Possible Preaching Angle:
So, basically, too much complaining (either listening to it or dishing it out) turns your brain to mush. The article provides three practical steps to avoid that negative, brain-numbing experience of complaining, but that advice can't top the Bible's simple command: "Give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thess. 5:18).

We used to have a short Halloween season, a nice slow-paced Thanksgiving, and then around mid-November we'd see Christmas stuff out for sale. Well, now these three events are getting mashed together in what one author calls a "HalloweenthanksgivingChristmaspalooza."

Ellyn von Huben notes, "I've noticed that so much of society's sense of holiday celebrations has been condensed that it is hard to even see what holiday we are headed toward."

Possible Preaching Angle:

This story (and her wonderful new word to describe this season) provides a great way to help your congregation slow down, take a deep breath, and focus on Christ and the true meaning of Advent, which Von Huben defines at "The time in which we prepare our hearts for the celebration of Our Lord made flesh to dwell among us."

Kathryn Buchanan was driving to work when she heard horrific news on the radio: Twenty-two people were killed in a suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. Tears immediately streamed down her face and Buchanan later said, “That was really heartbreaking.”

Amid the deluge of devastating headlines about the event in May 2017, Buchanan noticed that “there was some coverage around all of the kindness that followed in the aftermath.” It gave her some sense of relief. For instance, people offered shelter, food, and rides to total strangers. Locals lined the streets to donate blood after the deadly attack. Cabdrivers handed out food and offered free rides.

Buchanan is a psychology professor at the University of Essex. She said, “I became very emotional and grateful that there was still goodness out there against the backdrop of horror.” Reading stories of kindness instilled a sense of hope in her that had been lost after hearing about the attack.

She began to contemplate whether being exposed to heartwarming content could counteract the known negative impacts of consuming harrowing news stories. Common symptoms include heightened stress, hopelessness, anger, anxiety, and depression. So, she started a years-long study in 2017, which was published in May of 2023.

Repeatedly throughout the research, Buchanan saw that uplifting news can provide an emotional buffer against distressing news. Buchanan also found that “there’s something special about kindness in particular.” She noted that while amusing stories diminished the effects of upsetting news, stories about acts of kindness were even more powerful.

Buchanan said, that the solution is not to avoid negative news, because “actually ignoring news all together can leave you feeling disconnected from the world you’re living in …. Following news stories that feature others’ kindness has a real set of emotional and cognitive benefits for people. It serves as a kind of reset button that allows us to have this faith in humanity.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In a world focused on the latest disaster, despair, and the universal feeling that our nation is headed in the wrong direction, imagine the positive effects of telling people of the kindness, goodness, grace, and love of God for them. Thanksgiving would be an excellent opportunity for this kind of witness to people in despair.

Author and blogger Chris Winfield shares his thoughts on gratitude:

“Why did this have to happen to me?” It didn’t matter if it was something big (my dog gets cancer, good friend dies) or something little (flight is delayed, spilled something on my shirt). I was in a constant state of “poor me.” This all started to change once I began writing a gratitude list every single day for the past 34+ months and it has changed my life profoundly. Here are the 4 most important things I’ve learned on my gratitude journey:

1. It’s Hard at First: My mentor told me to text him three things that I am grateful for every day. Sounds pretty easy right? Well, it wasn’t. When you’ve lived most of your life not focusing on gratitude, it’s not so simple to change that.

2. There Is Always Something to Be Grateful For: No matter what was going on in my life (business problems, I was sick, someone cut me off in traffic) there was always something that I could find to be grateful for (my health, my daughter’s smile, etc.).

3. Gratitude Grows the More You Use It: My gratitude lists started off very basic and I struggled to find things to be grateful for (especially on the really tough days). But once I consistently took action, it became easier and easier.

4. It Can Help Stop Negative Thought Patterns: According to the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, the average person has about 70,000 thoughts each day! There’s one big problem with this — the vast majority of these thoughts are negative. Gratitude can work to stop these negative thought patterns by replacing it with something positive.

The first Thanksgiving tells of survival against imponderably difficult odds and the celebration of Native Americans and English settlers alike around a common table. With delicious food before them, they thanked God for being alive to enjoy all of God's good gifts.

Thanksgiving has always struck (many) as a profoundly religious observance. Therefore, (they are) dismayed at the backward encroachment of Black Friday—the busiest shopping day of the year—into Thanksgiving Day itself.

Stores have been opening early—say, at 6 a.m.—on the day after Thanksgiving for years. But extremely early openings (4 a.m. or 5 a.m.) have gradually become more common. Target, Best Buy, Macy's, and others caused a stir in 2011 by opening at midnight. Wal-Mart went further the next year and opened in the evening on Thanksgiving Day. (Now) nearly a dozen stores—including Macy's, Target, Best Buy, and Kohl's—will be open at least as early as that … meeting our perceived need to be able to buy what we want when we want it … and at huge discounts.

Our national holidays gradually erode with every wave of unending commerce. It's a regrettable move that suggests what we value most is not family, religion, history, or even the cherished notion that God has blessed America. Instead, for us there is no day so sacred that it would keep us from standing in long lines to get a flat-screen TV.

It is significant that President Abraham Lincoln established a regular date for a nationally observed day of Thanksgiving while the Civil War was still raging. ... In his Proclamation of Thanksgiving, Lincoln urged people to consider that even amid the ravages of war, God had blessed America with "fruitful fields and healthful skies," and that, even in the nation's suffering, God had "nevertheless remembered mercy."

(Now) he might regard the stories of the shrieking mobs surging in a blind rush for holiday bargains and trampling a Wal-Mart employee to death in the process as falling somewhat short of both American and religious ideals. ... Nor does it sound like something that our God—who commanded his people to give even their servants and animals rest on the seventh day—smiles upon.

In the fall of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued two landmark statements. The first was the famous Gettysburg Address in which Lincoln commemorated the battlefield of Gettysburg. The other statement, made just weeks before, may be a bit more surprising. On October 3, 1863, President Lincoln instituted the first official Thanksgiving holiday.

Lincoln wrote, “It has seemed to me fit and proper that [the gracious gifts of the Most High God] should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.” Thus, Lincoln set apart the last Thursday of November as “a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father.” Apparently, in the midst of the worst war our nation had ever seen, Lincoln thought the time was ripe for gratitude.

We may be tempted to think Lincoln’s statement of gratitude was inappropriate, naïve, or even offensive. Reading the entire text of Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, however, disabuses the modern reader from the conclusion that he had (somehow) forgotten about the Civil War. Lincoln candidly addressed the horrors of the Civil War, a war “of unequaled magnitude and severity” that had transformed tens of thousands of Americans into “widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife.” But he coupled this hardship with hope, recognizing the hand of God guiding him through the valley of the shadow of death.

Conflict and gratitude. Hardship and hope. Lincoln wasn’t confused. He was seeing thanksgiving through a biblical lens.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The surprising context for the holiday Lincoln instituted is a good reminder to us today. God wants us to “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thess. 5:18) because it focuses our hope and future in the goodness and power of our God and not on our “light and momentary troubles” (2 Cor. 4:17).

What's it like to walk free again after years behind bars? Lee Horton and his brother Dennis know the feeling. They were convicted of robbery and murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. They always maintained their innocence. Earlier this year, after being locked up for a quarter of a century, they were granted clemency and released.

Here's Lee Horton’s story:

I'm going to tell you honestly. The first thing that I was aware of when I walked out of the doors and sat in the car and realized that I wasn't handcuffed. And for all the time I've been in prison, every time I was transported anywhere, I always had handcuffs on. And that moment right there was … the most emotional moment that I had. Even when they told me that the governor had signed the papers … it didn't set in until I was in that car and I didn't have those handcuffs on.

And I don't think people understand that the punishment is being in prison. When you take away everything, everything becomes beautiful to you. ... When we got out … we went to the DMV to get our licenses back. My brother and I stood in line for two and a half hours. And we heard all the bad things about the DMV. We had the most beautiful time. And all the people were looking at us because we were smiling and we were laughing, and they couldn't understand why we were so happy. And it just was that - just being in that line was a beautiful thing.

I was in awe of everything around me. It's like my mind was just heightened to every small nuance. Just to be able to just look out of a window, just to walk down a street and just inhale the fresh air, just to see people interacting. ... It woke something up in me, something that I don't know if it died or if it went to sleep. I've been having epiphanies every single day since I've been released.

One of my morning rituals every morning is I send a message of ‘good morning, good morning, good morning, have a nice day’ to every one of my 42 contacts. And they're like, ‘how long can (he) keep doing this?’ But they don't understand that I was deprived. And now, it's like I have been released, and I've been reborn into a better day, into a new day. Like, the person I was no longer exists. I've stepped through the looking glass onto the other side, and everything is beautiful.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This enthusiastic testimony is an exact parallel to that of a person set free from a lifetime of captivity to Satan (2 Tim. 2:26). The experience of God’s glorious freedom and new life in Christ results in a joyful expression of gratitude and amazement (Acts 3:8).

God looked with delight upon his handiwork at the end of each day of creation having found it good. Part of what it means for us to be created in God's image is to possess a natural appreciation for beauty and the urge to celebrate it and its source.

Anyone who doubts this need only visit the pier at Mallory Square in Key West, Florida around sunset. Tourists from the world over line the railing there each day and watch reverently as the sun sinks silently into the western horizon. In its fading rays a spontaneous response ensues--clapping!

Beholding once this ritual with my own eyes, I couldn't help but wonder. For whom do they think they're clapping?

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) As a Thanksgiving illustration this reveals mankind's universal inclination to give thanks; 2) The incongruity of recognizing the beauty in God's handiwork but denying his existence (Rom. 1).

It seems that folks sometimes offer biblical encouragements—“fear not,” “do not be anxious,” and so on—as if the heart were a cup full of fear or anxiety that needs to be emptied of those emotions so it can be filled with alternative emotions. (However), it fails to understand that sorrow, fear, and anxiety are not always sinful emotions. In fact, such emotions may constitute appropriate responses to the loss (actual or threatened) of real goods.

The heart is more like a scale. Specifically, a “balance scale,” the kind often used as a symbol for justice because its two sides weigh different arguments and positions in the process of reaching a true and righteous judgment.

A proper use of biblical encouragements and exhortations will take this picture of the heart into account. … Instead, biblical encouragements should be offered as counterweights. Doing so might look like this:

I know your heart is (rightly) heavy with sorrow due to the loss of some good thing(s), that it is overwhelmed by present circumstances, that it is uncertain of what tomorrow may bring. However, let me offer you a counterweight, not to remove these emotions (the cup metaphor) but to place them in relation to a larger reality: the reality of God’s sovereign goodness, attention, and purpose, which offer solid reasons for encouragement and hope in the midst of trial.

These “counterweights” do not remove the other “weights” of our hearts. Rather, they provide consolations that enable our hearts to bear the weights of sorrow, anxiety, and fear in this vale of tears, until we arrive at our destination of unmixed, unshakeable beatitude in the presence of the triune God.

Recent studies have shown that doing this one thing can add years to a person’s life and is an accurate prediction of how fulfilling their marriage will be. What is this magic elixir? A smile.

Smiling has truly remarkable effects. First, doing it actually makes you feel good even if you're not feeling good in the moment. A 2009 MRI study demonstrated conclusively that the brain's happiness circuitry is activated when you smile (regardless of your current mood). If you're down, smiling actually prompts your brain to produce feel-good hormones.

Smiling is also a predictor of longevity. In a 2010 study, researchers looked at Major League baseball card photos from 1952. They found that the span of a player's smile actually predicted his lifespan--unsmiling players lived 72.9 years on average, while beaming players lived a full seven years longer.

Similarly, a 30-year study out of UC Berkeley examined the smiles of students in an old yearbook, with almost spooky results. The width of students' smiles turned out to be accurate predictors of how high their standardized tests of happiness would be, how inspiring others would find them, even how fulfilling their marriages would end up. Those with the biggest smiles came up on top in all the rankings.

Where do you stack up when it comes to smiling? Know this: under 14% of us smile fewer than five times a day. Over 30% of us smile over 20 times a day. And there's one group that absolutely dominates, with as many as 400 smiles a day: children.

So, there you have it: smiling makes you feel good, makes you look good, and gets you a better marriage in the end. Seems like something to smile about.

Possible Preaching Angles:

As always, God’s Word is years ahead of modern research. We read that “a joyful heart is good medicine” (Prov. 17:22), the “joy of the Lord is your strength” (Neh. 8:10), and “though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible …” (1 Pet. 1:8).

There are four qualities that distinguish highly grateful people from less grateful people. They experience gratitude:

(1) More intensely for a positive event

(2) More frequently throughout the day

(3) With greater density for any given benefit (i.e., they are grateful to more people for every positive event)

(4) They’re grateful for a wider span of benefits at any given time in their lives (e.g., for being included in an activity, or for succeeding on a test, or performing well in a game).

Therefore, one way you’ll know that your child and you are becoming more grateful … is that you’ll both start to noticeably embody these four qualities.

According to author Richard Beck’s book, gratitude is a simple practice. You don't need to dance in a Holy Ghost conga line to do this. One of my favorite studies about gratitude is the "Count Your Blessings" study conducted by the psychologist Bob Emmons. I remember singing the old gospel hymn "Count Your Blessings'' as a child. The admonition of the song seemed so simplistic and trite:

When upon life's billows you are tempest-tossed,

When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,

Count your many blessings, name them one by one,

And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

Count your blessings, name them one by one,

Count your blessings, see what God has done!

Count your blessings, name them one by one,

Count your many blessings, see what God has done.

Turns out those lyrics are cutting-edge science. In his "Count Your Blessings" study Emmons had participants do the simplest thing: At the end of each day take a moment to count your blessings by writing them down in a journal. And you know what happened? At the end of the study the participants who engaged in this simple practice of thanksgiving where healthier—emotionally and physically—than the control group. Simply counting your blessings made people healthier and happier. That's the cheapest therapy you're ever going to find.

Prayer, as a practice, is a constant posture of thankfulness. Prayer is the mindful discipline to act out of an experience of gift rather than scarcity. So count your blessings. Name them, one by one.

Author Christopher de Vinck writes:

Gratitude is the exclamation point after the narration of our lives. Whether we are grateful for big things (life, liberty, love) or grateful for the small things (the flight of the heron, chocolate, the scent of the sea), we are the only creatures on earth who can articulate a sense of appreciation with words … of thanks.

According to a joint study between the World Health Organization and Unicef, one in nine people in the world don’t have access to safe and clean drinking water. I shower every morning, and I wash my car and sprinkle my lawn with water that I can drink.

According to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, one in nine people in the world go to bed hungry. I often can’t decide if I want an orange, a banana, a pear, an apple, or other fruit nestled in the bowl at the center of the kitchen table.

Elie Wiesel, the man who lost his family but not his faith during the Holocaust, wrote: “When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.”

In Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play Our Town, the character named Emily, having been given one day to return to the world after her death, calls out:

Goodbye Grover’s Corners—Mama and Papa. Goodbye to clocks ticking—and my butternut tree! —and Mama’s sunflowers—and food and coffee—and new-ironed dresses and hot baths—and sleeping and waking up! Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you! Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it—every, every minute?

For his first Thanksgiving alone in 1985, Scott Macaulay was thinking that he would have to heat up a frozen turkey dinner and turn on a football game to stifle the silence in his apartment. With his parents recently divorced and “nobody talking to anybody,” he said, “I was looking at a pretty rotten Thanksgiving. And I absolutely hate to eat alone.”

Then Macaulay had an idea: What if he took out an ad in the paper and invited 12 strangers to join him for Thanksgiving dinner? It seemed like a manageable number to host at the First Baptist Church he attended—and, yeah, it was a little crazy, but it had to be better than being lonely.

Since those 12 strangers gathered around his table for turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie 33 years ago, Macaulay has made his free feast an annual event. Through the years, he has fed plenty of widows, widowers, homeless people, and college kids who can’t make it home.

One year an elderly woman paid $200 for an ambulance to drive her to the church from her nursing home. She arrived decked out in fancy clothes and said she hadn’t been out in seven years. She cried when dinner was over. Infants have spent their first Thanksgiving with Macaulay, and more than a few elderly people have sat down for their last.

Because Thanksgiving wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without giving thanks, Macaulay always asks people to write what they’re thankful for on a slip of paper and leave their thoughts in a basket. He saves the submissions and reads them throughout the year, long after the table has been cleared and the dishes washed.

“Sometimes, they’re grateful they no longer have cancer or that they finally found a job or have a place to live,” he said. “One year, a guy wrote that he was thankful his son was speaking to him again. That one was a tear-jerker.”

Geoff Shanklin, 65, lives alone and has attended every dinner since the tradition began. He said, “He really enjoys passing it on to lonely people in Melrose. For people like me with nowhere to go, Scott is family.”

Research has shown that practicing gratitude boosts the immune system, bolsters resilience to stress, lowers depression, increases feelings of energy, determination, and strength, and even helps you sleep better at night.

In fact, few things have been more repeatedly and empirically vetted than the connection between gratitude and overall happiness and well-being.

In a survey done by Kaplan, she found that while “more than 90% of people think gratitude makes you happier and gives you a more fulfilled life ... less than half regularly express gratitude.”

Shawn Achor, a psychologist who teaches at Harvard, suggests that we can train our brains to become more grateful by setting aside just five minutes a day for practicing gratitude. He cites a one-week study in which people were asked to take five minutes a day, at the same time every day, to write down three things they were thankful for. They didn’t have to be big things, but they had to be concrete and specific, such as, “I’m thankful for the delicious Thai take-out dinner I had last night.” Or, “I’m thankful that my daughter gave me a hug.” Or, “I’m thankful that my boss complimented my work.” The participants simply expressed thanks for three specific things at the same time every day.

At the end of one month, the researchers followed up and found that those who practiced gratitude—including those who stopped the exercise after one week—were happier and less depressed. Remarkably, after three months, the participants who had been part of the one-week experiment were still more joyful and content. Incredibly, after the six-month mark, they were still happier, less anxious, and less depressed. The researchers hypothesized that the simple practice of writing down three thanksgivings a day over the course of a week primed the participants’ minds to search for the good in their lives.