Here's One Less Thing to Worry about This Thanksgiving

Driving to work one day, something struck me so poignantly that I nearly had to stop the car.

It was a cool fall morning.

The leaves had turned colors overnight. Light rain gave a welcome reprieve from the dry sizzling summer we had just endured.

I was a bit bleary eyed—not unusual despite the strong cup of black coffee I had swallowed in the moments prior my departure.

I fiddled with the radio, trying to find a station not airing commercials.

A school bus passed by in the voluminous roar of its massive engine. Turning a corner, I headed west only to be struck by the magnificent:

An emphatic rainbow stretched from end to end across the November sky.

Photo Credit: Baldur McQueen (creative commons)

The sun was at the perfect angle to have its rays divided by moisture in the air, and I was the lottery winner—the lucky recipient of God’s boundless beauty that day.

The world around me stopped. 

Whatever noise spewed from the radio I ceased to hear. I do not much remember the next thirty seconds, because all I could do was hunch over the steering wheel and gawk out the window.

My reaction was the result of several factors:

Part of it was the unexpectedness of the rainbow. Part was the intensity. Part was the beauty. 

And part was the promise.

Rainbows often remind us of the promise God made after flooding the earth. But seeing it just a few days before Thanksgiving gave it special meaning:

Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. 

 As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.

Genesis 8:21-22

On Thanksgiving Day we gather to celebrate the bounty bestowed on us by our heavenly Father. Every year is a fulfillment of that promise, and the rainbow a symbol thereof.

From what little I know about the universe, I understand that the earth is in an extremely delicate balance. One tiny adjustment to its distance from the sun, or its atmosphere, or any number of variables, and life on earth would perish.

Knowing these things makes it is easy to worry.

Whether we worry or not, the earth will pass away one day (Matt. 24:35). But until then, we can take comfort in the fact that although there may be droughts in our lifetime, the harvest will never cease.

That’s a promise.

So go ahead and worry about whether or not the turkey is really done. And by all means worry about how much Aunt Cindy has had to drink.

But as for the harvest? Let the LORD take care of that.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. 

Are you not much more valuable than they? 

Matthew 6:25-26 

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I am thankful for my wife and kids.

I am thankful that I have a savior who cared enough about us that he became one of us and bore our sins on the cross.

I’d love to hear what you’re thankful for; leave a comment below.