Turning Thanksgiving into Thanksliving
I an MacPherson told about traveling across England by train one hot summer day. As the train rolled to a stop in a little village, through the open windows of the car MacPherson could hear someone outside shouting, “Praise! Praise! Praise!” MacPherson said he stuck his head out of the window almost expecting to see a bearded Hebrew psalmist singing one of the canticles of the OT. He later learned, however, that it was simply the conductor calling out the name of the local station which was P-R-A-Z-E. MacPherson told the conductor, “It must be wonderful to always live in “praise.” We do not know the name of the Psalmist who wrote the last of the songs in the book of Psalms- Psalm 150.
We don’t know the name of the town where he lived. What we do know is the kind of attitude with which he lived. In this Psalm, 13 times he speaks of praise—-and to live in that kind of attitude would make life so much different, so much sweeter, and so much better than where most of us live our lives every day. As we are approaching the celebration of Thanksgiving, this psalm is an appropriate passage of scripture for us to read and delve into. It offers wonderful traits of a grateful heart-traits we need to implement into our own lives as a way of living in the world of praise.
You can never live in Praise-until you learn to live with a grateful heart. Is your heart a grateful heart? Does it often and continuously give thanks to the Lord? Does your heart find the place to give thanks? Does your heart always have something for which it can give thanks? Does it find the way to express it? If you have experienced God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness, you have every reason, no matter what the circumstances, to be thankful.
As we approach this Thanksgiving Day, let our hearts begin the process of becoming a thankful person, not just observing Thanksgiving, but living a life of thanksliving. It is a wonderful thing to always live in praise.
