Thanksgiving 2025
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever
Happy Thanksgiving Friends,
Tomorrow is the day that most of us in the United States intentionally set aside to give thanks. For many it is a day of happy celebration, family gatherings around tables overflowing with good food, and the occasional annoying relative.
For far too many Thanksgiving is a day of deep sadness, loneliness and hunger, and longing for relatives, annoying or otherwise.
I am forever grateful that I can claim to be in the first group, but I am keenly aware of how close I am to the other. It is incredibly easy for a single incident to occur in anyone’s life that can bring about devastation and ruin. We are living in an extremely insecure time for millions of people in this country, and it feels much too much like history is repeating itself. The nation’s leadership has failed and driven us toward financial and political ruin. It will be difficult for many to be thankful this season.
Hope
Any yet, I am hopeful, and I am thankful.
I am hopeful because my trust is not in this country or the leadership of it. It is like a house built on shifting sand pressured by the winds and the waves of rising storms. A house that will surely fall and crumble leaving death and sorrow in its wake.
My hope is built on the Solid Rock. A firm foundation that cannot give way. The foundation holds firm and secure against the rising storms and the blowing wind. Christ is my firm foundation. The rock on which I stand.
It is this hope I am blessed, and I am thankful.
Thankful for today and present times because I know that God is at work. Though we may not see it, the presence of the Holy Spirit is surrounds us working to bring about the will of God in that which he has created.
Thankful for tomorrow and the times to come because of a faithful God who has promised a new and glorious day.
“There are graces to which we have not attained, places of fellowship nearer to Christ that we have not reached, and heights of communion that our feet have not climbed.” — C. H. Spurgeon
I am thankful for the grace of God today and for the graces yet to come. The “graces to which we have not attained.”
I am thankful to be part of God’s family, the fellowship of the Saints, the Church, even in the mess of these present times, and I look forward to the coming “places of fellowship nearer to Christ.” Places I have not yet attained, but know that, by his grace, I will.
Each day I relish the communion I enjoy with the Lord. I look forward with immense gratitude to climbing further the “heights of communion that [my] feet have not [yet] climbed.”
Give Thanks
And so, I give thanks, not because it is the day to do so, but because the Lord has given me hope. Hope that goes beyond my experience today and is secure on a firm foundation built upon the steadfast faithfulness of a loving Savior.
It is my hope that this Thanksgiving Day you also will joyously give thanks, if not for today, for the promises not yet attained.
Pressing On
I chose to call this newsletter Pressing On because my life since I began following Jesus more than 50 years ago has been guided by a verse found in Paul’s letter to the Philippian church.
I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me…. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:12-14
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Thank you, Paul. A very happy thanksgiving to you as well.
Happy Thanksgiving Randy