🦃🥧🌽🍂🍗🍞 thanksgiving dinner the psalm 1️⃣1️⃣6️⃣ way
Posted : 25 Nov, 2024 11:04 AM
And all those themes—our repentance, Christ’s sacrifice, and a “thanksgiving meal”—are present in Psalm 116. Maybe the Psalm, then, gives us a pattern of how to approach the Thanksgiving tables we’ll sit at in just a few short days.
1. Testify about your need and God’s faithfulness.
The Psalm doesn’t begin by talking about theology in an abstract way, or discussing salvation generically. No, it begins with a personal testimony:
I love the LORD, because he has heard my voice
and my pleas for mercy.
Because he inclined his ear to me,
therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
(Psalm 116:1-2, ESV)
We learn here that for the Christian all of life is repentance—we “call on him” for mercy “as long as we live.” We never graduate from needing to say, presently, “God, I have sinned. I am broken. I need you.” So maybe around our tables, we can spend a moment with friends and family simply telling our story: “I want to remember this day that God is so faithful. That I’m a wreck, but he has forgiven me, is forgiving me, and will forgive me.”
2. Make the Thanksgiving table an echo of Christ’s Table.
The Psalm goes on:
What shall I render to the LORD for all his benefits to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the LORD.
(Psalm 116:12-13, ESV)
There it is again, “calling upon the name.” Repentance. But this time it’s tied to the cup and to the meal. Perhaps then, as we Christians look at our thanksgiving tables, we might see them as extensions of the table around which we celebrate the Lord’s Supper with God’s people. Everything we eat and drink can remind us of our salvation in Jesus and point us to the future feast that the Lord’s Supper points us to. We can say to those gathered around our tables this Thanksgiving, “Let’s remember that, in Christ, we will all one day join in the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev 19:9).
3. Re-commit your life as a whole sacrifice of praise.
The fruit of this kind of reflection on the Thanksgiving table leads us to:
