a surprising reason to be thankful

From our earliest years, we’re taught the good manners to thank someone when they give us something or do something for us. Thanking them shows we recognize and appreciate the kindness, consideration, time, trouble, and expense they’ve gone to.

How much more should we thank God for so many undeserved blessings? Thanksgiving praises Him and acknowledges that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:7).

But recently I came across a surprising reason to be thankful.

Ezekiel 16 is an extended metaphor comparing God’s care of Jerusalem to the care of a man who found an abandoned baby girl, cared for her, fed her, and clothed her royally. When the baby grew up into a beautiful woman, the man loved her and wanted her to be his. In verse 14, God said, “And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you.”

But instead of being thankful, Jerusalem “trusted in your beauty” and then became promiscuous with just about anyone she could find, taking God’s gifts and making idols, even sacrificing her children.

This passage reminds me of King Uzziah, who “was marvelously helped, till he was strong. But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction. For he was unfaithful to the Lord his God” (2 Chronicles 26:15-16).

It’s a sad facet of our human nature that we can take God’s good gifts and use them for our own glory or gain.

We become prideful, forgetting anything good in us comes from Him. And then we turn from Him to false idols like the people in Romans 1:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity (Romans 1:22-24).

When we thank God for what we have, we remind ourselves that everything is a gift from Him. In 1 Corinthians 4:7, Paul reminds us, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?”

It’s not that God wants to lord it over us or browbeat us with the reminder that we should be thankful to Him. But He knows our hearts are “prone to wander,” as the old song says.

So thanking God not only gives Him proper praise, but it keeps our own souls healthy. We remind ourselves that everything we have comes from Him and is to be used for Him. We respond with humility, appreciation, and loving service.