The Life of Thanksgiving

Dear all,

   Thanksgiving is coming soon... Do you know how it began?

Thanksgiving is mainly a day to thank God for everything. And from the Old Testaments, we can see that God ordered his people to have a feast to thank him:
           "Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the LORD seven days" (Lev. 23:29)

However, US is celebrating the Thanksgiving day, because of the famous story of the Pilgrims who escaped away from England to Holland due to religious persecution. They settled in Plymouth Rock and they began planting and harvesting with the help of some Indians... Instead of losing a big number of them while they are sailing to save their lives, they celebrated the harvest as their first surviving year...    

Then, the years round and the US presidents changed Thanksgiving date till it settled down on the forth Thursday in November... 

That's how the pilgrims celebrated to thank the Indians who saved their lives... Nowadays, we celebrate thanksgiving as a day to thank God for all the things he gave us and to remember how he loved us...

Here is a part of His holiness Pope Shenouda III, pope of Alexandria and the Patriarch of all Africa on the holy apostolic of Saint Mark the evangelist, book about "The Life of Thanksgiving"

Happy Thanksgiving... Hope you enjoy the book, and waiting for your comments... 

Thanksgiving by Maramero

One of your biggest problems in the life of thanksgiving is holding to your personal thinking rather than the divine planning. We would like to arrange our affairs with our human thinking, and according to our own methods. God might have another plan which we do not understand, so we become angry and do not give thanks! For example: if our demands are not met we are angry. Sometimes we go up a step, and do not get angry, but at the same time we do not give thanks.

Our endurance means that there is distress which we do not grumble about, but we bear in patience. While our thanksgiving means our confidence that this incident is good, for which we give thanks to God. Here, we are moved from seeing to believing and by faith we see the good in all what God does to us, not relying on human judgments which decide on the outside.

If the Divine inspiration says, “Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.” (James 4:17).

More truly that God does the good because He is able to do so. Of necessity, I must believe that God does the good with me, because by nature He is beneficent and actually He does so.

 If my condition was bad, it could have been worse without God’s grace, but thank God He did not abandon me. Probably, my bad state is a result of my faults and I must blame myself.

As for God, I have to thank Him because He is not angry with me for my faults, and by all means He will help me to come out of it.

Then, I must have confidence in God’s wisdom and planning and do not rely on my human thinking and limited understanding. In all what happens to me I should say: There must be a divine wisdom behind this affair which will be revealed in time, and whether God revealed it or not, His wisdom exists and we thank Him for it. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”(John 20:29).

This belief in the wisdom of God leads us to the life of submission, and the life of submission entirely agrees with the life of thanksgiving.

In this life, I say to the Lord: I thank you Lord because if you have found me a better position than my present one, you could have transferred me to it. Or, if I deserve more, you could have given me. Truly, you are always giving me more than I deserve. Enough for me to believe in your wisdom and love, in disposing my life and this deserves thanksgiving.

There are many normal matters in our life which really need thanksgiving.