The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
First United Lutheran Church Pastor Richard Zimmerman Finish the sentence! You must have had at least one teacher in school who set those words ringing in your ears in English class! No matter how much or how little we felt we needed to know it, we were all taught, carefully and meticuously, that a proper sentence has three parts: the subject, the "action word," or verb, and the direct object. In simplest form: "Johnny hit the ball." Without sentence-part number three, the direct object, you're left hanging as to just what Johnny hit: his sister (God forbid!) or the winning home run in a baseball game. Finish the sentence! But when it comes to a person's thinking about Thanksgiving, lots of folks never finish the sentence. We all know we're supposed to feel "thankful" at this time of year. Even people who hardly ever pray otherwise will make an attempt at this table for this meal. Turkey and trimmings, family and friends rate high on the list. That's great! But make the sentence as short and to-the-point as you can: "I thank ____." It's not a real sentence without that direct object! Not much meaning in those first two words unless you finish the sentence! You know where I'm going with this! "I thank God" is the sentence that brings strength and hope and meaning to this national holiday. But that's where it gets hard. Maybe you feel today that there is very little or nothing to thank God for, in your life or in the world. So Thanksgiving can become pretty shallow and hollow pretty quicly. Unexplainable tragedies, family pressures, economic uncertainties, killer viruses on the loose in people and cows and canola, rising tensions in the Middle East - all these things gang up to rob Thanksgiving of its meaning. Yet there is one reason you can always be thankful. His name is Jesus. The Apostle Paul writes, "Whatever happens, keep thanking God because of Jesus Christ" (I Thessalonians 5:18). No circumstances, no illness, no discouragement can ever take from you the peace and forgiveness Jesus wants to giv eyou as you trust your life to Him! He proved His love for you on Good Friday's cross and at Easter's empty tomb! This Thanksgiving, finish the sentence! Say with Paul in Spirit-given faith: "Thank God for letting our Lord Jesus Christ give us the victory!: (I Corinthians 15:57). Happy Thanksgiving!
