“We give thanks to you, O God, we give thanks, for your Name is near; men tell of your wonderful deeds.” (Psalms 75:1)
I remember when Thanksgiving was a big deal. Today you hardly have time to celebrate it before you have to get out of the way for the Christmas rush.
It’s a crying shame, but we’ve allowed Thanksgiving to be swallowed up by the commercialization of Christmas. Well I’ve decided that I’m going to marshal a little assault on a much too early Christmas season and celebrate Thanksgiving with you today, even if I am over a week late. So drop your packages, put your credit cards up, and shove the wrapping paper back under the bed. I’m going to give you a Thanksgiving testimony and if you look hard enough, you might see some things for which you are thankful, too.
Many of us take our marriages for granted. It’s easy to find that niche in a marriage where you don’t have to say, “I love you”, or “thank you”. It’s not that the things we do for each other don’t matter. We just seem to get so comfortable with the routine of marriage that we fail to notice the small things that make the real differences in our lives.
I kidded my wife the other day that she was a “Proverbs 31 Woman”. “It’s true, honey,” I told her. “Why you could eat off our floors…. Macaroni and cheese, cereal, you name it. It’s all probably down there.”
Well the joke was on me because when I had the time and actually read Proverbs 31 again, I saw a lot of my wife’s qualities described in those verses: Trustworthy, wise, strong, virtuous, caring, loving. She has them all. And when I read the verse, “Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her,” I said to myself, “Thank you, Lord, for blessing me with her.”
Many of you don’t know that my wife led me to the Cross. That’s right! When no one else seem to care very much for me, she showed up in my life. I saw Jesus for the first time when I looked in her eyes. So you see it was his love, shown through her, that led me to him. She helped me realize that God doesn’t care as much about our ability as he does about our availability.
Don’t think for a minute that our marriage is perfect. It isn’t. We occasionally disappoint each other and we periodically argue. That’s all a part of being married. But I refuse to allow the disappointments and arguments to stand in the way and blind me from all the things, big and small, that she does for our family and me.
I am also thankful that at how God continues to teach us to apply his Word to the problems that surface in our marriage. The other night we had an argument and went to bed angry. That’s a biblical no-no and we paid the price for ignoring it. When we finally made up, we talked about it and promised each other that we would never again “let the sun go down” while we were still angry. (Ephesians 4:26)
We also made another promise that night that’s brought us closer together than any one thing we have ever done in our marriage. Before we drift off to sleep, we lay in each other’s arms and pray together. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve never felt closer to God or to Robbie.
The great thing about being married to a Christian is that my wife is not all that unusual. All of us who have Christian wives and husbands have seen the very same qualities that I see in Robbie. So take a moment this weekend, before the Christmas rush resumes, and think about all of the small ways that your husband or wife shows just how much they unconditionally love you. Tell him or her how much they mean to you. Remind each other how important it is to apply God’s Word in your marriage. And when you go to bed tonight, put your arms around each other, say a prayer together, and thank God that you can celebrate Thanksgiving every day of the year.
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