Giving Thanks

As a shy teenager, Barbara Ann Kipfer started keeping a list of her favorite things. Before long the list began to flow naturally. She found herself adding to it while riding the bus, at the breakfast table and during the middle of the night. Some twenty years and dozens of spiral notebooks later, her list was published as a book. The title? 14,000 Things To Be Happy About.

Could you write such a book? As we celebrate the Thanksgiving Day holiday, does gratitude flow naturally from your heart for your favorite things?

The Bible echoes with the call for God’s people to “give thanks to the Lord.”

But who needs to be told to be thankful? Thanksgiving and praise to God flows naturally from the heart and through the lips of those who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ Jesus. How could it be otherwise? When you’ve been rescued from the clutches of death and darkness and brought into the kingdom of the beloved Son of God, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, how could your heart not overflow with thanksgiving?

I love the account in Luke 7 where a Pharisee invites Jesus into his home for dinner. While they’re eating, this woman, who had quite a sinful reputation in town, comes in and disturbs the meal. She brings a jar of expensive perfume and stands at Jesus’ feet, weeping. Then she begins to wet His feet with her tears, bends down to wipe them with her hair and starts kissing them. She took her bottle of Guerlain’s Le Parfum Sur Mesure (or something) and poured it as she anointed the feet of her Savior.

The Pharisee, who was all about outward religious appearances but cold and empty-hearted, was quite put off by this brash display. In his own mind he thought that if Jesus really were a prophet then surely He would know what kind of woman this who was touching Him, and most certainly would not allow any thing of the sort.

But Jesus had something to say to the man with the critical attitude. He told a story that explained the situation. Hear the words of Jesus:

“A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” (Luke 7:41-42).

The dinner host correctly answered that the one who owed the larger debt would have loved him more. Here’s where Jesus gets to the heart of the matter. While the Pharisee could only see this woman as a wretched sinner still owing a huge debt, Jesus saw her as a grateful woman whose debt had been cancelled. And with that debt cleared from her record, thanksgiving and love flowed naturally.

Jesus turned to the woman and said to His host: “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven – for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:44-48).

You may or may not be able to come up with 14,000 things to be happy about, but here’s one to start with: the forgiveness of your sins. If your faith rests in Jesus’ sacrifice for your sins on the cross, you know what it is to be forgiven and cleansed, and given new life in Christ Jesus. That’s my number one – my favorite thing. What’s yours?

Jesus said to the woman with the tainted past and stained reputation: “Your sins are forgiven…Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Luke 7:48, 50). She’s been rescued from her sins, saved from the clutches of death and hell, and brought into the light of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. How could her heart not overflow with love and thanksgiving and praise?

She would have risen up and sang with the psalmist: “Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever! Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the adversary” (Psalm 107:1-2).