The Scripture reading this week is Isaiah 55:1-13
The Sermon title is Go Out with Joy
Early Thoughts: An unusual Thanksgiving reading. But one that speaks to the abundance God provides, and what better topic is there for Thanksgiving?
The secret to Thanksgiving (or maybe a secret to Thanksgiving) is to see abundance around us.A key part of offering thanks to God for the gifts of God is to recognize that they are freely given gifts.
It is my belief that when we change how we see the gifts that fill our lives each day we change who we are, we change how we interact with the world. In short we are transformed to be more like who God would have us be.
God is at work in the world. God sends gifts to the deserving and the undeserving. God calls us all to the banquet, to eat and drink without money. For that we give thanks. In our thankfulness we can go out with joy, sing songs of thanks (along with the mountains and hills?), and clap our hands (along with the trees of the field?)
This Thanksgiving weekend I encourage all of us to remember the blessings in our lives, to remember that we have been gifts from God, to sing out our thanks for those gifts. But more than that I encourage us to open ourselves to the transforming work of God as we decide what we will do out of our giftedness. And as I do every Thanksgiving season I think of this classic hymn:
--Gord
PS: There is a hymn in Voices United taken from Isaiah 55 (page 884). Here is the Gaither choir singing it
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