A Philosophy of Gratitude—Thanksgiving 3 of 4
Col 2:6 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him,
Col 2:7 rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
Col 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.
The passage begins having “received Christ,” this points to a necessary action on the part of the believer. It does not say, because Christ came, or because He exists or because you have heard of Him or any other thing, if you have not personally received Him, then He is not yours.
The passage moves on to say, “Continue to live in him,” This tells us we need to take action in order “to live in Him”. It also then implies that if we do not “continue”, that is, if we have done the action, then it will be possible to live apart from Him. Of course, I do not mean to say, that we can exist apart from Christ’s existence. Since we know that all things that exist, exist in Him; we know that we are not speaking of life itself, rather the attributes of our lives. So as you have received Christ, let His attributes come to life in you. “Continue to live in his attributes,”
The passage now says we need to be “rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as we were taught.” If you picture in your mind your spiritual roots, exactly what is it you see your roots going down into?
The Cross?
The Babe?
The Shepherd?
The Preacher?
We want to see our roots sink deep into everything that Christ is. Christ is sacrificial and obedient, He is innocent, humble, gentle, and meek. Meek in that he did not seek fame, fortune or selfish gratification; He did not come to take, but rather to give. This attitude that was in Christ is where we sink our roots.
Back to verse seven “and overflowing with thankfulness.” We seldom think of Christ as thankful. But in the scriptures when we find Christ in prayer, we find Him being thankful. Thankful to God for revealing His will to the simple, thankful for giving the bread and fish that fed the multitude, for the bread and wine that we know is Communion and Jesus thanked God for listening to Him outside of Lazarus’ tomb.
Thankfulness was a big part of who Jesus was, and we need to follow him in that attitude of thankfulness.
In "The Power of Giving Thanks” By Jeff Jacoby, he writes,
Gratitude is nothing less than the key to happiness.
For this penetrating insight into gratefulness, I am grateful to Dennis Prager, author of the shrewd and perceptive "Happiness is a Serious Problem."
"There is a ’secret to happiness,’" Prager writes, "and it is gratitude. All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that it is being unhappy that leads people to complain, but it is truer to say that it is complaining that leads to people becoming unhappy. Become grateful and you will become a much happier person."
[Scripture] is filled with expressions of gratitude. "It is good to give thanks to the Lord," begins the 92nd Psalm.
Why? Because God needs our gratitude? No: because we need it. Learning to be thankful, whether to God or to other people, is the best vaccination against taking good fortune for granted. And the less you take for granted, the more pleasure and joy life will bring you.
SOURCE: From, Boston Globe Staff, 11/23/2000. http://www.homiliesbyemail.com/Special/
Thanksgiving/power.txt
Colossian 2:8 capitalizes on this same thought, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy.”
Philosophy is more than what we think; philosophy is how we think. Many people want to pull you down into negative thinking, which is a place where the Christian should not go.
Have you ever driven on a dirt road? One where there are ruts? Sometimes after a rain, when the ruts are cut deep, you can actually release the steering wheel and the car seems to drive itself. At times, it seems impossible to get out of the ruts. In our lives, we can get so comfortable driving in the ruts that we forget there are dangers.
When I was in High School, I hung out with some kids who were poor examples. We used to go out on the weekend, party and pretend we were much older than we were. Because of our behaviors, being caught by the police was one of our big concerns. I had one friend who thought he had found the way to avoid being busted. His car fit perfectly over the railroad tracks. Burlington Northern seldom used the railroad in our community, so driving on the tracks seemed like a safe alternative.
When driving on the railroad tracks you can travel two speeds, very slow or very fast. If you go slowly, you roll from railroad tie to railroad tie. If you go fast, you bounce over them so quickly it is almost smooth. At any speed in-between, it will beat you to death. It is also important to know it is illegal to drive on the railroad tracks, so you must turn your lights off so the police do not catch you.
On one particular night, my friend was heading home driving the railroad tracks. The moon seemed to be illuminating everything quite well. With the headlights off and traveling about 40MPH home was only a few minutes away. The moonlight illuminated everything except a row of flatcars left parked on the tracks. You knew it was coming—wham-mo! He survived, the car was totaled and we all learned a valuable lesson: the ruts of life are not as safe as we may think. Even when something appears to be a real good idea, if you are yielding your control over to this world, you are heading for a wreck. Do not let your thoughts go into such negative places you must keep control.
In regions of Mexico hot springs and cold springs are found side by side, and because of the convenience of this natural phenomenon the women often bring their laundry, boil their clothes in the hot springs, and then rinse them in the cold springs.
A tourist watching this procedure commented to his Mexican guide: "They must think Mother Nature is generous to freely supply such ample, clean hot and cold water."
The guide replied, "No senor, there is much grumbling because she supplies no soap."
We can be too much like the little boy who was given an orange by a man. The boy’s mother asked, “What do you say to the nice man?” The little boy thought for a moment, handed the orange back, and said, “Peel it.”
This week we celebrate Thanksgiving. In many ways, it is one of the craziest weeks of the year. I know I am talking about other people’s families because there is no one here who is going to take the traditional Thanksgiving Day drive.
You know the one where you get up Thursday morning, pile into the family car, and fight bumper-to-bumper traffic down the I-5 corridor at white-knuckle speeds ranging from 75 miles per hour to a dead stop. Then you take the exit ramp too fast slide the pumpkin pie across the trunk it hits the fender knocking the entire pie filling to one side of the pan. Your wife looks at you and says, “Slow down before you kill us all.” You then push the gas pedal tight against the floor, because you are not going to be outdone by your brother-in-law, who is also on his way.
The kids in the back seat begin to scream and yell as if there was a python slithering across their legs. Why? Because one of these cheery sibling actually touched the other one. Now that the children are yelling at each other and the adults are yelling at the kids. You turn the corner clip the crib; you hear the bowl of mashed potatoes rolling across the trunk slamming into the back of the seat as the car comes to a complete stop in front of your in-laws, exactly 3 minutes, 45 seconds ahead of your brother-in-law. Then after five and a half hours of reserved aimless conversion with a gathering of people, you only know because you are married to your wife. You get back in the car and begin the journey home by saying the exact same thing you said last year, “I will never come here again.”
It was probably after a large family Thanksgiving that Cecelia D. Williams saw a pile of dirty dishes and wrote this poem that helps us to focus on what these family gatherings are supposed to be about:
Her Poem went like this…
Thank God for dirty dishes,
They have a tale to tell.
While other folks go hungry,
We’re eating very well.
With home and health and happiness
We should not want to fuss.
For by this stack of evidence,
God is very good to us.
It is the dirty dishes of life that can pull our philosophy into vain thoughts or that can assist us in seeing what is truly important. Jesus instructed us,
Mt 5:14 “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
Mt 5:15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
Mt 5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
Do not think as the world would have you think; think as God wants you to think. A right philosophy is one that is overflowing with thankfulness and shines so brightly that others can see clearly how an attitude of gratitude glorifies God.
