And again, "Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name!" (Psa. 100:4).

Psalm 150, the grand finale of the Psalter, is composed entirely of a chain of 13 commands to praise the Lord. It closes with a call to all living creatures to join together in a swelling chorus of praise to Him. "Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!" (Psa. 150:6).

"Where are the nine?" Jesus asked, when only one of 10 lepers He had healed, a despised Samaritan, returned to express his gratitude. "Was no one found to return and give thanks except this foreigner?" (Lk. 17:17-18). That note of disappointment at human ingratitude is as much a revelation of the Father's heart as anything our Lord ever said or did.

God looks for and delights in the thanksgiving of His grateful people. Should not you and I, then, delight to give it to Him? Should we not assign to thanksgiving a much larger place in our prayers?

The Cause of Our Thankfulness

"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits" (Psa. 103:2). What a mighty impulse to thankfulness lies in those three words of the psalmist: "all his benefits"! As the English poet Joseph Addison put it:

"Ten thousand thousand precious gifts
My daily thanks employ."

Let me suggest to you a Thanksgiving Day exercise that our family has found to be both helpful and revealing. After you have feasted on your sumptuous dinner of turkey with all the trimmings, ask each member of the family--be sure that you don't leave out any of the children, even the youngest--to take a sheet of paper and write down all the things he is thankful for.

When this is done, ask each one to read his list to the rest. Then ask the whole family to join together in prayer, as each, in turn, gives thanks to God for the blessings he has thought of. I know of no better way to stimulate the spirit of thankfulness in our hearts and in our homes.

Any such inventory of God's goodness will certainly include the common blessings of life most of us are privileged to enjoy: health and home, family and friends, food and clothing, work and play, laughter and happiness, and all the wonder and beauty of nature that God has created for our pleasure.

As citizens of this great land, we should remember how highly favored we are. While not all of us are rich and some--an alarmingly increasing number--are poor, we know nothing of the appalling poverty, hunger, and disease that are a triple scourge to millions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Every minute 24 people, mostly children, starve to death or die of extreme malnutrition. By the time this service is over, 1500 of our fellow human beings will have died since we gathered here just because they didn't have enough food to keep them alive and well. Each and every day, 35,000 men, women and children--13 million a year--vanish from our planet, devoured by the dragon of hunger.

We Americans enjoy an affluence never matched by any other nation or generation in history. Our material resources are incalculable. Our forbears have bequeathed to us an unsurpassed heritage of political and religious freedom. Educational benefits and opportunities for cultural enrichment are available to almost everyone. In this century of unprecedented global warfare, we have been spared the horrors of devastation. Our national blessings are the envy of the whole world.

Beyond these and a host of other things, each of us has his own special reasons to give thanks. But as Christians we should be grateful most of all for God's gift of salvation in Jesus Christ and the wealth of spiritual benefits that are ours.