History teaches us that Thanksgiving Day was celebrated by our Pilgrim forefathers to acknowledge the Lord for His blessings and to share those blessings with their fellow men. To celebrate a Thanksgiving Day, which may be accepted by the Lord as true gratitude for His blessings, I direct your attention to two essential ingredients found in Job's words cited above.

When an employee receives a paycheck for a term of honest labor, it is a natural reaction to say thank you when it is received. If that employee is a God-fearing employee, the Lord will also be acknowledged in thanksgiving, as with Job saying, ". . . the Lord gave." It could even be that an employee might say thank you out of politeness. Even though he\she may feel as though it was not a sufficient reward for the service rendered.

However, there would be a much greater degree of gratitude in the heart and mind of one who had fallen into financial straits and received a donation from some friend, who delivered that person from these financial straits. If such a one were a God-fearing person, the heart would be warmed to turn unto the Lord with the words of Job saying, ". . . the Lord Gave." The gratitude would be increased by the fact that nothing had been done to earn that money and such love on the part of that friend.

Job had received many great blessings from the Lord. Now he had just received word that the Sabeans and the Chaldeans had taken all his property, and that a great wind from the wilderness had slain all his children. What was Job's reaction? We read that Job, ". . . fell down upon the ground and worshipped." Job 1:20.

Even though we read in Job 1:8, "Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?" Yet Job had a realization of how greatly he had forfeited the least of God's favor through original and actual sin. This is evident from where he said, ". . . the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

We read in verse 22, "In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." It is only by the grace of God that we understand true thanksgiving. We deserve nothing, but we need grace to realize it. It was by grace that Job did not charge God foolishly. For according to our fallen nature, if all goes well, we can speak well of the Lord; but if the Lord comes against our desires, we show our enmity.

If we may be led by the Holy Spirit to trace our lives through the past year, we would confess, "If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared," Ps 130:3-4.

If we have true Thanksgiving, ". . . unto God for His unspeakable gift," it will reveal itself by our sharing our blessings with our fellow man. "For the administration of this service not only supplieth the want of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God," II-Co. 9:12-15. Amen.

If profit be thy scope,
Diffuse thy alms about;
The worldling prospers laying up,
The Christain laying out.