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Cole Feix
avatarCole Feix2 min read  

The Paradox of Thanksgiving

    Happy Thanksgiving! It’s the time of year to slow down and remember all the blessings we have been given. This week marks a wonderful holiday and the beginning of Advent, the season of preparing our hearts for Christmas. Out this morning, we have a podcast all about how to celebrate Advent. 

    There’s a paradox in the Christian life when it comes to gratitude. On the one hand, Paul reminds us in Ephesians 1:3 that we have been blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. We have all we will ever and could ever need, stored up for us in heaven. And the astonishing thing is the title is already in our name. It’s ours because we are Christ’s. What we have in him is beyond anything we could ask for or imagine or even try to put into our own words. 

    On the other, our earthly lives are a shadow of what they will be in glory. We suffer here, get sick, and experience sorrow and loss. Sometimes, it’s very hard to see the blessings we have as anything other than far-off and spiritual. 

    In the gap between the already and the not yet, we have the opportunity to be grateful. Right after telling us to count it all joy when we suffer trials, James reminds us, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” (1:17). When we have sorrow, joy. When we do have earthly goods and pleasures, all the better. In each and every circumstance, we have the privilege of thanking God for his gifts. 

    This Thanksgiving, make time for gratitude - and not just platitudes! - true gratitude to God for what he’s done for us, for the country we live in, for the friends and loved ones we have. Thank God for the future glory that is ours in Jesus Christ, waiting for us, never threatened, never expiring, and never changing. 

    We truly have so much to be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving!

    Dr. Cole Feix is the founder and president of So We Speak and the Senior Pastor of Carlton Landing Community Church in Oklahoma.

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