Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, an official holiday stretching back to Abraham Lincoln. I love this day dedicated to feasting and giving thanks.

The Bible encourages feasting to remember the goodness and work of the Lord. In one example God instructed Moses concerning Passover: This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast (Exodus 12:14).

It’s good and proper to feast and focus on God’s benevolence. I’m thankful today for my wife, my children and their spouses, my granddaughter, my family and my extended family—every person a gift from the Lord. I’m grateful for good health, a warm house, a job I like and people I like working with, for the ability to travel abroad and to return to a free and prosperous country.

I earned none of these gifts. Everything I possess and enjoy pours from the hand of God. Today I revel in graciousness.

Savor the feast. Fasting awaits, but not this day.

Spoon out a second helping without hesitation and taste the goodness of the Lord.

Photo by Jed Owen

I read my news feed or glance at social media and encouragements to love stare back. This usually involves loving a cause currently in vogue, or persons different from myself. As a part of this loving emphasis, people also humbly brag how they love better than others.

I find it easy to talk big about love, but much harder to practice. While folks spray paint love on walls and post signs on doors, I don’t notice an actual increase in loving acts of compassion around me.

John wrote this: Little children, let us not love in words or talk but in deed and and in truth.

Talk is cheap when it comes to actually loving others—spray paint as well. The thought does not count. Only the actual work, in particular toward those difficult for us to love, begins to fulfill that of which John writes.

Jesus taught to love your enemies. Incredibly counter-cultural to this day. I don’t see this phrase on many walls. How do we love such difficult people in our lives? Zechariah tells us, not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord of Hosts.

The Holy Spirit empowers us to move from feelings of love to actual practice in our gritty interactions with others. Just ask, and you’ll find help to move from words to deeds.

1 John 3 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Hannah Gibbs

If John lived today, he could not pen a more challenging statement during this season—do not love the world or the things in this world.

Advertisements bombard us year-round, but holiday to holiday brings increased fire. We’re told to love something of this world, anything really, and hopefully buy it. Even better, buy two or three! Just swipe your card and keep the wheels of commerce spinning.

Of course, we need to buy and sell, and it’s nice to give gifts others appreciate. But while fine things in life warrant our appreciation, nothing we possess deserves our love.

Rather, the Lord and those around us deserve love. Things are to be used, people are to be loved. Our pride and our bellies entice us to flip this idea.

Material goods wear out, even the coolest clothes and niftiest gadgets. But the Lord and his words and the souls of people remain forever.

This holiday season launched by a day dedicated to thankfulness and culminated by a day celebrating the Savior merits more than crass absorption into stuff. As we enjoy the giving of gifts, may we remember the placement of affections.

1 John 2 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Heidi Fin

We tend to remember seemingly trivial details from the most important moments of our lives. I remember laying off-white 12×12 floor tiles in our small kitchen the day before our daughter was born. She came early, and I didn’t finish the job until much later.

Some of the disciples, adrift after the crucifixion and resurrection, decided to spend an evening fishing. Skunked all night, at first light a distant man on shore hollered at them to throw their net on the other side of the boat. Why not? As they did so, the net swelled with fish and they realized Jesus stood with them once again.

They rowed in, then Simon Peter hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them.

This detail concerning fish stuck in John’s mind. Not just the amount of fish, but the size (Jesus ain’t sendin’ no minnows). A joyous reunion marked by a miraculous catch, one these particular followers of Jesus—fishermen all—never forgot.

Later, as they spread throughout the world preaching about Jesus, and they met their deaths one-by-one for doing so, they burned with conviction remembering the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, capped by a cookout on the beach featuring 153 fish.

John 21 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2021

Photo by Jakub Kapusnak