Thanksgiving Challenge, Day 6

 Day #6: I'm thankful God is eternal. 

"Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God" (Psalm 90:2). Did you ever try to imagine what it means for God to have no beginning and no end? It'll make your brain hurt! As a kid I used to think of God just sitting around in nothingness before he created the universe and wonder if he got bored just existing! But I think that to say that God is eternal is not really to say that he's been living forever and ever, it's to say that he is outside of time. And that's really hard to imagine. As humans, everything we do it tied to time. Everything has a start and an end and a linear timeline in between. But God, who created time for us, is completely unaffected by it! And if you read Revelation, you can see that God's children will live with him for all eternity. So one day we will also be unaffected by time! That fact makes all the big, important things in my life and in this world really seem unimportant. When I live in light of eternity, things that are only earthly and bound by time don't matter as much. May my focus be on the coming day when time will cease and the eternal will be all that matters!

Thanksgiving Challenge, Days 4 & 5

 Day #4: I'm thankful that God is holy.

"And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, 'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!'" (Revelation 4:8).

According to the Dictionary of Bible Themes, holiness is "The moral excellence of God that unifies his attributes and is expressed through his actions, setting him apart from all others." God is completely set apart from and different from his creation.

I think when I was growing up and I heard the phrase "God is holy," my mind immediately went to passages such as Leviticus 11:45, where God says "You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy." So talking about God's holiness usually inspired guilt because I felt like I didn't measure up. (That was before I came to realize that, in sanctification as in justification, I cannot work my way to God. I can only "keep in step with the Spirit" [Galatians 5:25] and allow him to bring about change in my life.) So I usually saw statements about God's holiness in a negative light.

Thanksgiving Challenge, Day 3

Day #3: I'm thankful that God is Creative

This afternoon I was sitting with my son on a blanket in the front yard. (At ten months, he doesn't like the feel of grass on his hands when he crawls, so he won't leave the blanket!) I was showing him all the pretty leaves that have fallen in our yard. It turned into a game where he grabbed each one out of my hand, crumpled it up, and threw it on the ground. He thought that this game was really funny! But as I handed each leaf to him, I noticed that, even though they all mostly came from our Bradford pear tree, every one was different. They were different sizes, slightly different shapes, and many different shades of red, orange, and brown. And I thought how creative our Maker is. He made so many diverse types of trees and plants and animals and people and planets and stars and amoebas! What an amazing Creator!

Thanksgiving Challenge, Day 1

 I feel like I'm jumping on the bandwagon by doing a "30 Days of Thankfulness" theme in November. I could try to defend myself by claiming that I had the idea before everyone and her mother was doing it on Facebook, or I could just admit that it's not a bad wagon to be on and join the band, so to speak!


I was going to pick 30 random (but mostly meaningful) things that I'm thankful for, but a friend and fellow blogger issued the challenge to choose a specific theme, such as a person or situation, and be more purposeful about finding things you're thankful for--to dig a little deeper. You can read her post here. So I decided to focus on the Lord and his character. I feel like I can name some basic attributes of God that I'm thankful for, but I think that it might be a challenge for me to think of 30 things. And that's just sad because he is an amazing God, and I should not get "stuck" when I'm trying to describe his character! I think this month I'd like to get to know him a little better by describing who he is.

So here we go!

Day #1: I'm thankful that God is King and Father.