In the United States, the fourth Thursday of November is Thanksgiving. We have adopted this tradition for seventeen years. Since Sunrise started in the first year, we celebrated Thanksgiving. Now we also extended the culture of Thanksgiving to Macao And other Asian places. It is good.
When we talk about thanksgiving, in English it means thank you. When people give us gifts, we would say thank you. It is granted. Christians politely say thank you to Heavenly Father is a “must”.
I think the Chinese word of thankful 「感恩」is more meaningful. Both words has the word 「心」”heart” underneath.
「感」has the meaning of feeling, sense. In Chinese we require thanksgiving is come from the heart, with feeling. It is not with no feeling, just use the lips to please God, but to express gratefulness from the bottom of our heart. I believe this deep level of gratitude will make God willing to give us more and more grace.
In the Old Testament, the culture of sacrifice taught us that thanksgiving sacrifice is to offer an object, before it can be called an “offering”. Therefore we encourage brothers and sisters to make a special offering, because the Bible said “where the money is, there your heart is” “Along with their fellowship offering of thanksgiving they are to present an offering with thick loaves of bread made with yeast.” (Leviticus 7:13)
Thanksgiving offering is to be eaten at the day it is offered. It means the meat is shared among people. “The meat of their fellowship offering of thanksgiving must be eaten on the day it is offered; they must leave none of it till morning.” (Leviticus 7:15)
We know that God does not really want to eat our meat and use our money. In the contrary, He likes to share with people. It means, as we are willing to give a thanksgiving offering, God is willing to give back to us so that we can rejoice with God. God, you are so good to those who are thankful. Hallelujah!
