Did you know we are celebrating Easter Monday on Thanksgiving Monday?
Well I didn’t either, until a slip of my mind and tongue declared it so.
Like many women, I work and teach and mother and love and pray and hope and live a full life. Sometimes the details pile up so heavily in my mind, the supersaturation of activities and plans spill out of my mouth in incoherency.
Yesterday was such a day when I told my children there would be no school or homework this coming Easter Monday. Of course, they laughed. I didn’t realize what they were laughing at until they told me what I had said.
Easter Monday.
That is what I am hoping for every day. The celebration and realization of the risen, living Christ in my life. Of course I will celebrate and give thanks and celebrate the Cross – the suffering, the death and the beautiful resurrection of Jesus – at Easter. However, I will also lift up my gratitude this Thanksgiving weekend. Oh, that I would celebrate Easter every day of the year.
Yet I forget. With my mind and heart turned to the pressing, immediate activities and responsibilities of the day, I forget Jesus, the Father and the Spirit. Until one slip of my tongue turns my mind to focus on the One true thing, the One true person in my life.
And boy am I thankful.
Thankful for His faithfulness to re-centre me.
Thankful for His faithfulness to remind me.
Thankful for a slip of the tongue that brings me back to the truth of who I am and why I am here.
As a follower of Jesus, all my gratitude and thankfulness during this holiday season of thanksgiving revolves around Him and what He has done for me.
I am forgiven. I am chosen. I am adopted into His family. I am loved. I am beloved. I am dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. I am hopeful. I am thankful. I am full of mercy and grace, love and truth. He lives in me. The list goes on and I thank the Father, the Son and the Spirit for His life and love and encouragement, and the greatest story of redemption.
Thanks for Thanksgiving
I have a children’s book of thanksgiving I read to my children every year. It has beautiful words and pictures reflecting the fall colours, activities and gatherings that centre around thankfulness. Yet it is missing one thing: someone to receive our gratitude. Since it has no framework of a Creator, the book encourages us to be thankful, but there is no one to thank. “Thanks for Thanksgiving, but don’t thank the One who set it all into place.”
I am so glad that the life I live and the thanks I give has someone at the receiving end. I am thankful the Father, Son and Spirit receive my love and gratitude. I am glad He lives and exists, and I am glad He gives me a voice, hands and feet to express my thankfulness.
So yes. Let’s celebrate Easter Monday this Thanksgiving. It is a day of hope, of life and of resurrected life. Lift up your voice or lift up your hands. Use what you can to say thanks to the One who made you and and all that you enjoy.
Thank you God, for Thanksgiving.
Rebecca van Noppen is a teacher, home educator, writer, and More Than Enough blogger, who happens to be married to a financial coach. A lover of Jesus, she is on a journey of surrender, kindness, and generosity.
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