Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Oct/80

Contributor - LeRoy A. Sandee

Title - Counting Your Blessings

Topic - Meditation

The month of October contains two important days for a Reformed Christian in Canada. One is Thanksgiving Day. It is a holiday called to our attention on most of our calendars. The other is Reformation Day, at the end of the month. You may not find October 31st so labeled because the general public is more interested in Halloween.

Thanksgiving to God ought always be a Christian priority. It is fitting that we praise God for His providential blessings of abundance that we enjoy. Recently I talked with someone who had talked with a missionary on furlough from Africa. The missionary said that he had seen real starvation for the first time in his life people actually dying from the lack of food. That experience changed his attitude toward how abundance should be used.

God expects us to be thoughtful and sincere about our thanksgiving. As we gather around heavily laden tables for a family festival of Thanksgiving, let us appropriately acknowledge the goodness of God. Perhaps His goodness is meant to be shared to a larger extent than we have thought. An appropriate Litany of Thanksgiving for every family might be Psalm 136 with the echoing response to the variety of God's gracious activities, "for His steadfast love endures forever".

Surely if we are deeply thoughtful about Thanksgiving, we won't stop with counting our material blessings. The observance of Reformation Day serves to stir up gratitude for the spiritual heritage so precious to us. As Reformed Protestants we stand for something because four centuries ago stands were taken. On Reformation Day we pause to praise God for the line of spiritual giants whom He used to preserve our faith.

Our faith was preserved at great cost. God was turning loose old ideas of truth that were new again. The devil fought back as Martin Luther expressed it - "for still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe; his craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate", but, "a mighty fortress is our God" and "on earth is not His equal". Thank God for such a man and for the scholarly sweat of the amazingly prolific pen of John Calvin as he expounded a theology drawn from the Word of God. Thank God for men with gifts of spiritual insight of such measure.

The reformers left a treasure to be preserved by succeeding generations of our forefathers. Who can begin to number the sermons that have been preached the closing weeks of October for the past four centuries on the three principles of the Reformation - "the authority of the Scriptures", "justification by faith" and "the priesthood of believers". Jude in his short letter feels compelled in verse 3 to urge his readers, "to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints". We praise God for those who have been faithful as we are called to commit ourselves to carrying on in their tradition.

"Blessed to be a blessing" - some of you will recognize that as the slogan of the Bethel Bible Series study. That we are both physically and spiritually. In these days the predicted false prophets appear to be especially active. Moreover, this is in a time when the media of communication provides history's best opportunity for spreading false gospels. In addition, this is a time when social structures are being undermined by shifting the moral standards to suit the whims of a permissive society. We thank God for being blessed with a hertiage that sends us to the Scriptures to "test the spirits whether they be of God".

In my reading I ran across this Thanksgiving petition - "Lord, You have given us much, give us one thing more, a thankful heart". May we also receive discerning minds to appreciate the faith of our fathers with a thankful heart.

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