Wednesday Bible study: Thanksgiving

 

We take a week off from the finale to the add tos for a "brief topical message":

I was not in a Thanksgiving or Christmas mood.  There seemed to be a lot of reasons, but the whole season seemed like a dead lead weight on my chest.  So I finally girded myself to bring it to Jesus.  And the first thing He said was:

"It's not about you. It's about Me."

Now it was time to listen to what He had to say.  And it took me, surprisingly, to the story of Exodus:

Exo 5:1  And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. 

Exo 5:2  And Pharaoh said, Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go. 

Exo 5:3  And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the LORD our God; lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword. 

And I thought to myself, "Thanksgiving is sacrifice?"  And I looked on:

Lev 7:11  And this is the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings, which he shall offer unto the LORD. 

Lev 7:12  If he offer it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer with the sacrifice of thanksgiving unleavened cakes mingled with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil, and cakes mingled with oil, of fine flour, fried. 

Okay, so then I thought about, what do You want me to sacrifice for Thanksgiving?  And Jesus, knowing about ONE thread that I was denying to myself, gave an answer.

"Sacrifice your politics, your opinions.  I know you fear the differences of opinion in your family.  How do you stay true to yourself and your well-meant convictions, when others are divergent, and in some cases even your opposite?  But you are to evangelize, and who are you bringing a Gospel of, Me, or yourself?  Strip it down.  Let it be about FAMILY, and family alone.  That is where I will shine."

And I thought, "Wow.  I was intending to be an idiot, wasn't I?"  We tend to wear our politics/opinions like a cloak, an identifier.  As a Christian, the only identifier I should be worried about is the one that connects me to Christ.  It wasn't a weight on my chest, it was a burden on my back, and I need to shuck it off.

But what about Christmas?  Again, it was becoming the "dread" of shopping for presents I can't afford, putting up decorations I didn't feel ready to be looking at... all the crap that made it 'about me' instead of 'about Him'.  So I took stock of what Jesus did- the sheer contrast between the Divinity He has, and the helplessness He entered- for Me.  Which made me grateful, and fed right back into Thanksgiving!

Now I cannot say, "Wow, I'm cured", and that my heart is about to grow three sizes...

...but at least I'm out of me, and heading a better direction....