Psalm 100
Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. for the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.
A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush
This next week we celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving, and it makes me beg the question… what is Thanksgiving? Thinking back to my childhood… I remember waking up Thanksgiving Day and turning on the TV to watch the Thanksgiving Day parade, I remember my mother making tons of food, I remember my father… watching football. I remember looking at the Thanksgiving fliers… and thinking about the mad shopping frenzy that would take place the next morning as people would stand out in the cold for a $100 big screen TV… or whatever else big draw was urging them to be outside in the cold… at 5 in the morning.
So I ask… what is Thanksgiving? Family? Football? Frenzy? Yes… yes… and yes. But it is more than that too… it is more than just another family holiday… it is more than a kickoff for Christmas… it is more than football on a Thursday. It is a holiday when we stop to give thanks for all that we have, stop to give thanks for all that we’ve been given, stop to give thanks to God.
Brothers and sisters, we have so much… God has given us so much, and yet we rarely take the time to truly show our thanks. Think back this last year… think of the really good times… think of the really, really bad times… God was there for you during both those times. God was there to give us hope, to give us strength, to give us peace and assurance at every single step this past year. But have we really thanked him for it?
Chances are… we have not. Far too often we take for granted all that we have and all that God’s done for us. Many times… we are far too busy thinking about all the things we don’t have… thinking about all the things God hasn’t done for us… and we miss out on appreciating all the things we do have. We dream of a better life, a better house, a better car, a better job… and in our dreams… we get lost… to the reality that lies before us. And in the end… we really miss out because our lives have been wasted wanting… and dreaming… instead of appreciating… and when we do that, we really end up losing what we had in the first place.
It is like the old parable… Back many years ago, when life was a little simpler, albeit a little harder, there was a man who didn’t even have two nickels to rub together. He was journeying towards the nearest town to try to find some food just to survive. As he walked the dusty trail to town, head low, feet aching… he was suddenly startled by a great ruckus coming from the ground near his feet
Here… a beautiful songbird had become entangled in the brush. With very little trouble at all, the man stooped down… grabbed the bird, and freed it from its entanglement. He had captured… a wild bird. It was a magnificent bird… surely worth several dollars in the town up ahead. Well, the man stood up and began skipping towards town with great joy.
Oh what luck! Oh what great fortune! Surely, this meant his luck had changed for the better. As he continued his journey to town… skipping, and singing… the man came across a bush. In this bush, lived two more songbirds. Oh what a very fortunate day, he thought… instead of having just one bird… I will be able to take three birds to town and have myself a small fortune!
The man darted towards the bush, and the songbirds began to take flight. He made several desperate grabs for the songbirds making their escape… but only caught air. Much worse… in his feeble attempt to capture these two birds in the bush… he had lost the bird in his hand. This poor man, who began our story with nothing at all… now found himself… with nothing at all… again. It is then that he learned the valuable lesson of this parable, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!” A more straightforward way of looking at it would be, “Be grateful for what you have, for the things we already have are greater than the things we only hope to get!”
Are we really thankful for all the things we have? Or are we like the man in this parable… always chasing a dream… even to loose what we already have? Really, when you get down to it… it is a parable about greed… about wanting more and more… and brothers and sisters… I think that if you really examine what happens during Thanksgiving… you will see a marketing machine in motion trying to tempt us to buy more… to get more… to want… more. It is quite funny… in my research for this sermon, I came across this Thanksgiving add:
NECKLACE SALE - ONLY $180
Whoever said ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ was far too complacent. We’ve always known that you can have your cake, eat it too, and sweat it off at the gym later on. So it’s delicious irony that your Bird In Hand necklace has gotten you so far. A bold way to glam up jeans and a vest, an original addition to your black cocktail dress, the classic coin, inscribed with the parable, is proof that old fashioned adages are made to be broken by a modern girl.
That is the message we will get over and over again this Thanksgiving… now compare that to the messages from scripture about thanksgiving:
1 Chronicles 16:8-12
Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always. Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,
1 Chronicles 29:11-14
Praise be to you, O Lord, God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all. Now, our God, we give you thanks, and praise your glorious name.
Psalm 100
Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. for the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.
All three of these… were songs written by the great king David… teaching us to put a right perspective in our minds. You see… we need to remember who gives all that we have… we need to remember how lucky we are to have all that we have… we need to stop and give thanks… and this makes all the difference between the attitude “I want it all.. and I want it now” and the attitude of being grateful for what God has already given us.
You see… it is like this: As a child, I had one or two toys… ok ok… lets be honest… I had enough toys to fill up several rooms. Cars, stuffed animals, board games, legos, transformers, john deere tractors, cultivators, planters, bailers, a Nintendo video game system with 50 games. Toys that beeped, toys that bopped… toys that wizzled, skidizzled, and plopped.
Yet with all my wealth of toys… do you think it was enough? No… it was never enough. This… proved doubly so right around Thanksgiving time. It was always about this time of year… that the Sears Christmas catalog would come out.
Way... way back in the day… (I’m talking WAY back in the 80s) living in a small town… my brother, my sister, and I… would do our Christmas shopping out of the Sears catalog. We would flip through the toy section… eyes… THIS wide… cutting out every little thing... that our little hearts desired. And there were enough toys on our wish lists… to bankrupt my poor parents.
And for that entire month, every night I would go to sleep with the visions of all those brand new toys running through my head. I had great anticipation… a great hope… that Christmas morning would bring a pile of toys that was as tall as I was. And then Christmas morning came… and there wasn’t a HUGE pile… it was simply… a BIG pile. OK… I thought… it is quality not quantity right!!!! Then the first present… SOCKS. OK… there are still about 15 presents for them to get it right. The next present… a sweater. Another present… a book! On and on… until all my presents were unwrapped… and I would only have 4 or 5 brand new toys. *SNIFF* *SNIFF*
What a messed up perspective. But admit it… how often do we do that even now. We have this great big dreams… and they cloud all the wonderful gifts we have… not only that… they cloud all the wonderful gifts we receive. Metaphorically speaking… we get a BIG pile of presents… and the first thing we tend to think… is “Why isn’t the pile HUGE”
But this is exactly what David is trying to teach us about. You see… we are a sinful people… we all have sinful desires… we have a corrupt outlook on life… and David pulls all of that back in… and then points to God. And says, look… you have all that you need… really… you have more than you need. Not only that… but you have a good amount of things that go beyond your needs… you have a ton of things you want… go beyond that… you have things that you DON’T even want… DON’T even use. All the while… we want more… and more… and more.
Brothers and sisters, lets pull it in really quickly to that great “SO WHAT?” This Thanksgiving… there will be time to make complete gluttons of ourselves, time to gorge on food, gorge on football, gorge on family, even gorge on commercialism. At the same time I would like to encourage you to remember the reason that we even have the opportunity to gorge on these things. It is because of a God who gives and gives in great abundance.
As Christians, let us remember to stop and give thanks to God for all he has done. Give thanks to God… for he is good… his love and his faithfulness endures forever…
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
