Thankfulness

Note: Last Updated 7/29/2024.

Gerald Bray: (Commenting on Acts 14:16-17)

The proof of God’s existence lay in his bounty to those who did not know him or worship him as God. Unlike other deities, he did not take care of his own people exclusively, or respond only to their requests. His universal presence was not merely a means of helping believers wherever they were; rather, it demonstrated his concern for the entire world. Paul’s point was that, at the level of nature, God treats all human beings equally, and when the apostles sought to persuade unbelievers of his existence, it was to their innate sense of gratitude for the blessings that they had received that they appealed. One of the most popular American holidays is Thanksgiving Day, which manages to be religious and secular at the same time. The Pilgrim Fathers who first celebrated it did so for religious reasons, but it was essentially a harvest festival that had no place on the church calendar. Today it is a major celebration when people are expected and encouraged to be grateful, but no one specifies to whom thanks should be given. Christians have no problem with this because they thank the God of Jesus Christ, but what about followers of other religions, not to mention atheists and agnostics? You cannot be thankful in the abstract, and most people admit they have received blessings that they have done nothing to deserve, even if they are not clear as to where those blessings have come from. They are usually quite prepared to be grateful for them, though, and this feeling gives Christians an opportunity to talk about God. Perhaps it is here, more than anywhere else, that “natural theology” comes into its own, because it is at this level, more than in the abstract realms of philosophy, that most people are likely to be touched by the Christian claim that there is indeed a God from whom all blessings flow.

(Gerald Bray, God Is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology, [Wheaton: Crossway, 2012], p. 35.) Preview. 

George MacDonald:

“I should like to see the one that made that!” she said at last. “Think of knowing the very person that made that poor pigeon, and has got it now!—and made Miss Brown—and the wind! I must find him! He can’t have made me and not care when I ask him to speak to me! You say he is nowhere! I don’t believe there is any nowhere, so he can’t be there! Some people may be content with things; I shall get tired of them, I know, if I don’t get behind them! A thing is nothing without what things it! A gift is nothing without what gives it! Oh, dear! I know what I mean, but I can’t say it!”

     …“Just fancy!” she said, “—if God were all the time at our backs, giving us one lovely thing after another, trying to make us look round and see who it was that was so good to us! Imagine him standing there, and wondering when his little one would look round, and see him, and burst out laughing—no, not laughing—yes, laughing—laughing with delight—or crying, I don’t know which! If I had him to love as I should love one like that, I think I should break my heart with loving him—I should love him to the killing of me! What! all the colors and all the shapes, and all the lights, and all the shadows, and the moon, and the wind, and the water!—and all the creatures—and the people that one would love so if they would let you!—and all——”

(George MacDonald, There and Back, [Boston: D. Lothrop Company, 1891], Chapter XXII: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, pp. 221, 221-222.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria