While I try to always be moved by vision rather than by the calendar, I think it is perhaps more important to talk about thanksgiving now than at any other time during my earthly existence. Why? Look at Wal-Mart and Costco. Early in September, the aisles start changing into their fall colors of orange and black in anticipation for Halloween. Even though we are still mowing grass, the Lawn and Garden department is being suffocated to non-existence by the tinsel and tinkling silver bells of Christmas. What about Thanksgiving? It has been relegated to the smallest shelf because it is hard to commercialize gratefulness to God in a post-Christian nation.
One reason so many Americans lack gratitude is that we have unbiblical and often unrealistic expectations. Our young people are the most marketed generation of all time, inundated with advertisements for every electronic device possible, guaranteed to make them as dependent upon technology as an addict is to cocaine. The underlying message is, “You deserve this. Everyone else has one; so should you.” Add to this marketing strategy the social ideology of entitlement, and you have a suicidal concoction ready to implode a culture.
We need to teach our children that no one, including God, owes them anything. In fact, Paul aptly described us in our fallen state as being “by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind,” (Eph. 2:3) whose end should be destruction. Instead of this deserved judgment, however, God extends to us mercy and grace through the person of Jesus Christ.
One of the glories of homeschooling is that we have a unique opportunity to address and correct the misconceptions of our secular culture that attempt to make their way into our homes. As Christians, this should be one of our greatest motivations to homeschool. When we teach our children to be grateful, it takes their eyes off what they think they deserve and focuses them instead on what God has already given them. They can learn to be joyfully content with what the Lord has supplied as opposed to focusing on an infinite litany of what they do not have.
As the holiday season begins to unfold, we need to be intentional to use the calendar to our advantage, teaching our children the importance of a spirit of gratitude, “giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:20).
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