Gratitude In Action: Catching People Do The Right Things!!

Gratitude in Action: Catching People do the Right Things!!

One of our (Leslie and I) constant prayers is to enable us to bring up Arvi and Aarav (our grand children) in the fear and knowledge of God. Towards this, we recently tried asking them to list of a few things they want to thank God for before we let them retire to bed. I don’t know about you, but for us and the children , it turned out to be a very difficult task than what we thought it would be. Have you experienced this feeling? Have you found that practicing Gratitude is not very easy, as it sounds.

That is what the Lord prompted me to speak about today. I have titled my message “Gratitude in Action: Catching People do the Right Things!!”

Let us start with a short bible quiz, shall we?

What is the first time Thanksgiving is mentioned in the Bible? Actually this came as a surprise to me personally. The books of Genesis and Exodus are full with miraculous signs and wonders and great deeds of God. You would naturally expect that the concept of Thanksgiving is mentioned in these two books many times. However, it is not so. First mention of Thanksgiving in the Bible is in the book of Leviticus. (Leviticus 7:12-15). Isn’t it interesting to note that throughout the book of Genesis and Exodus, the concept of Thanksgiving is not mentioned or recorded. Adam and Eve did not thank God for the beautiful creation that God entrusted to them. Abraham does not seem to have thanked the Lord for giving him a son at his ripe old age. The families of Isaac and Jacob contended with the blessings of God, rather than thanking Him for the same. Joseph’s brothers do not thank him or the Lord for the way God made him a big man in Egypt and thereby saved them all from certain death. Not even after the Spectacular miracles of crossing the red sea, or provision of Manna did the Israelites think of thanking.

Let us not forget the full picture. In all these instances that I pointed out, Offerings are mentioned, worshipping is mentioned. But not thanksgiving. Actually I went to extent of doing a Hebrew word study to confirm this. The Hebrew word for thanksgiving is “Todah”. This word Todah is used first time in Leviticus 7:12. The Hebrew term used for offering in Gensis is “Minchah” which is the term used for offerings where blood is not involved. This is the terms used for the offerings of Cain and Abel. The other terms used for offerings are “olah” for burnt offering, and “zevach” for slaughtered or Passover offering. All the terms for offerings get consolidated into Qorban later in Leviticus, when the system got codified. And for worship, the common Hebrew term used is “shachah”. There are other terms used for worship like Avad, Barak and Halal. There is an interesting bit about the term halal. We all know the Islamic food term halal. That is an Arabic word meaning lawful, and has no relation with the Hebrew term halal, which is used for praising God. Actually the term hallelujah is a derivative of halal. On the other hand the hebrew word Qorban and the similar Arabic word both have same meaning, offering.

I don’t want to put you to sleep with Hebrew lessons this morning. The message I want to convey is this. It is very interesting to note that the concept of Thanksgiving appears first time in the Bible as a law, as a mandatory sacrifice that the Israelites were required to offer. It appears as if God knew about the ungrateful nature of mankind and wanted to institute this concept among mankind through the mosaic covenant of the law.

Come to think about it, we can trace it to basic human nature. If you go shopping with a shopping list of 23 items and come back with 22 items, what do you get picked out for? The one item you did not bring isn’t it? When your child brings home her marks card, where do our attention go first? Let us be honest, we look for the one item where she got a B and talk about it not withstanding the fact the brilliant girl has scored a+ in five other subjects. This is human nature, we are wired to catch people do the wrong things.

But should that be the case? Can we develop a mindset of catching people do the right things? What do we need to do to reach there?

Let us continue with the statistics, shall we? The next one should be easy. Which book is Thanksgiving mentioned last? Of course it is in Revelation, we cannot go beyond that right? Altogether, Thankfulness appears about 370 times in the NIV version of the bible. Which book of the Bible talks about this most? Again , a no brainer, it is the Psalms. (about 78 times). There are about 8 Psalms that are specifically Thanksgiving Psalms. But here again, if we actually leave out David, there are very few places where Thanksgiving is mentioned in Old Testament. Interestingly, after Leviticus the first Bible verse giving thanks is by David in 2 Samuel 22:50. So basically, with the notable exception of David (Chronicles and Psalms) the concept of Thanksgiving is not a popular topic in the Old testament.