I was flying to Phoenix last Sunday and struck up a conversation with the lady sitting next to me. She was going to visit her sisters for Thanksgiving. Though she had children and even grandchildren in California, she said she loved getting together with her sisters because they still held to all the old family traditions. Now, I don’t know what those were exactly, but you all could probably fill in the blank. It might mean baking a particular sort of pie or using grandma’s casserole recipe. Perhaps it’s the time they eat, the rhythm of food and football, and then the long-awaited evening sandwiches made from the leftovers. I’m sure most of you have a particular tradition you want to see observed every Thanksgiving Day. Something that makes the day meaningful, something crucial to its success. For many people, Thanksgiving is a time to simply gather around a table with those important to you. And for many, there is a tradition of taking turns telling what it is for which you are particularly thankful. Around the Table, each person shows something that causes them to give thanks.

This isn’t a tradition that my family does, though I think we may have attempted it a time or two. However, it is a fascinating exercise, perhaps one we shouldn’t relegate to one day of the year. It is fascinating to take the time to share what you are thankful for, and hearing what your friends and family are truly thankful for is a great experience. The problem, I suppose, is that you probably won’t be surprised by most of what they say; the affirmation of their thankfulness will usually fall into well-worn categories. In other words, they are thankful for the things you’re supposed to be thankful for: the blessings, the happy times, and the victories over the last year. These things mark our thanks, and rightly so, but perhaps there is far more to giving thanks than just recounting the good times. Or, to think of it another way, the blessings of our God are not just about joy and happiness; rather, they come in trial and suffering and humility as well. And they are no less a blessing, no less a cause to give thanks.

The book of Deuteronomy finds the Israelites situated on the Plains of Moab. They have come through 40 years of wilderness wanderings and are back where they began. As they stand there overlooking the promised land, poised and ready to take possession, God says to his people, “The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers.” As they finally take the land promised to them, they are called to attend to the Word, the command of God. And this begins with their shared remembering. Like a great family sitting around the Thanksgiving table, they are to remember what God has done for them, remember His guidance and preservation these past 40 years.

Yet we may well notice that their remembering is a bit different from our usual moments of thanksgiving. They aren’t recalling just the good times, the happy days, or the unexpected blessings.  Instead, they are to remember how God humbled them and tested them “to know what is in your heart.”  Their thanksgiving will include how God let them hunger and fed them with manna, by which they learned that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. And sure, they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, but their foot did not swell that whole time, and their clothing did not wear out. They give thanks that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord disciplined them.

All these years later, we know that the promise of the land was far more than a place of permanence East of the Jordan River. That land was but an image pointing us to a greater hope, a new heaven, a new earth—a land where we shall never know scarcity, pain, or toil, a land flowing with the eternal blessings of our God. And yet, as we are all eager to enter such a place, eager to receive such lasting blessings, we are called on this day to remember and give thanks for the Word of God. And in our remembering and thanksgiving, we ought to take note of the discipline of God’s Word in our lives. These are the blessings that hurt, the gifts that are painful, for they humble and break us and strip us of all our pride and contentment. We have been conditioned only to see the happy times as times of thanksgiving, but we learn here from the ancient people of God that the whole of God’s care, both times of abundance and scarcity, are part of the work of God and worthy of our thanks.

God’s blessings for which you give thanks begin not in victory and building up but in death and destruction. The death of your work, the humbling of your pride, and the condemnation of your actions are the blessings that empty you out so that you might be filled with the good things of Christ.  Let us then give thanks for the law that breaks us and exposes our sins. Let us give thanks that we cannot save ourselves and that we cannot climb up to heaven no matter how hard we work. For this is the good work of God’s Word in our lives. In emptying you out, He then is prepared to fill you with the one thing that will save you. For here, you learn that man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. In your confession, your inability to save yourself, he says, “I forgive you all of your sins; you are my dear children, and in me you shall live forever.”

And this, my friends, is truly a cause for thanksgiving.