Thankful Thursdays

Have you ever thought about how available Bibles are and that it was not always that way? I am thankful to have not only a bible, but many, in different translations with helps bound in the books as well. Then there are the concordances, and online you have an unlimited access to lexicons, study helps, translations… you name it.

I am thankful for books, period. We romanticize the Medieval courts and even the Renaissance times, but in those days it was rare for even the aristocrat to be literate, let alone have much of a library.

And speaking of libraries, although I am on the libraries bad side with fines…which I can’t seem to handle the timing of -even with online alerts ( going to an email I hardly ever check). I am thankful for our plentiful libraries.

And a good portion of that thankfulness is for the Reformers and Puritans who so boldly stood for translated Bibles and the literacy becoming commonly available that all may function as priests and read the Bible and those writings that educate and elevate man. And don’t forget Gutenburg.

Thanks to God for brave and inventive people, for talented and intellectual people, for the creative and the entrepreneurial, the productive and the diligent.

There are things that are obviously only God: a sunset, an ocean, a forest of majestic trees… but in the all that there is, it would not be if God hadn’t had a hand.

That’s worth thanks.

I am thankful for the inner world that God creates for me, the forgiveness, and the assuage of hurts, for the neutralization of angers and explanations of things that sometimes cause me so much confusion, for answers to prayers, so that I hope and have enough to go on…. for what the Lord has put into brothers and sisters who freely offer a hug and compassion.

We sometimes don’t realize all the threads of God’s goodness… we are sure it all is happenchance if we even consider it at all.

But what gave us our circumstance and raw material of life? what continues our ability and our will in it all? God is all in all, and Christ freely shares that with us, so we are not outside this vast plan, but within and now as integral as the Lord Himself.

How is this? Like King David, we are taken to “”Who am I, O Sovereign LORD, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far?” Who am I in the expanse of time, of the universe? And yet, here we are, with much…so much to be thankful for. Every day.

::update:: Have problems being thankful? Check out Mark LaRoi’s report.