Are you Thankful? Or are you an atheist?

In Canada we’ve reached that time of year again where for Christians at least we take part in a special celebration for something that we do on a smaller scale everyday. Specifically, we thank our Lord and our Creator for His physical, emotional and spiritual blessings. Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s also the time of year when atheists pretend that they have something to be thankful or grateful for. That of course is ridiculous. Atheists can no more be logically thankful for what they have "received" than a worm can dance a jig. At best they can feel very, very lucky. And if any atheist was actually able to comprehend the odds against them being here by accident, they would feel very lucky indeed. No, according to atheism, any given individual is nothing more than the chance result of one person’s selfish genes forcing h/her to successfully mate with another phenotype of the same species. If the result of the mating is able to use a computer, chances are there were no extraordinary mutations during the process.

For the rest of us, there truly are marvels bestowed upon us that we gratefully receive day in and day out. The greatest marvel of all that is given to us free of charge, with no strings attached, is the Love of Creator God that resulted in the provision of the salvation and rescue for our souls.

“But in our eyes there was no attractiveness at all, nothing to make us want to be around Him.

We despised Him and rejected Him - He was known as a man of sorrows, well acquainted with bitterest grief.

We turned our backs on Him and looked the other way when He went by.

He was despised and we didn’t care.

Yet it was our grief that He carried, It was our sorrows that weighed Him down. He lived this earthly life so that He knows exactly what we’re going through. We thought that He was just another man, a mere mortal struggling with the sorrows and tragedies of life.

Instead He was being wounded and bruised for our sins. He was tortured to death so that we might have peace; He was lashed and whipped and crucified so that we could be healed!

He never did anything to deserve the punishment that came upon Him. All He did was love and encourage others to do the same. Instead, we are the ones who strayed into danger. We are the ones who left God’s paths to follow our own way. We are the ones who are prone to wander.

Yet God’s plan, from before the creation of the universe was to lay on Jesus, who was God in human form, the guilt and sins of every one of us.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted yet He never said a word. That should have opened our eyes to the fact that something special was happening. An innocent Man, silently and without defence was allowing others, us, to have Him executed. Jesus stood silent before the ones condemning Him and He allowed Himself to be tortured and killed. Thousands of years before this took place, it was prophesied that Jesus’ sole purpose for coming to earth was to take the penalty of our sins upon Himself so that we, if we so choose, do not have to be forever separated from eternal Love.

From prison and trial they led Him away to His death. But no one among the people of that day realised it was their sins and ours that He was dying for - that He was suffering their punishment on their and our behalf.

This was Jesus’ plan for Himself from before the founding of the world. It was God’s plan to bruise Him and fill Him with grief. By making His soul as an offering for sin, He rescued a multitude of people, too many to count. Because He lives again, God’s program prospers in Jesus’ hands. And because He sees all that is accomplished by the anguish of His soul, He is satisfied with His perfect plan for our salvation.

Through this plan, Jesus makes it possible for billions and billions of people to be counted righteous before God, for He carries the punishment for all their sins. Therefore I will give Him the honours of One who is mighty and great, because He has poured out His soul, even unto death. He did this while we were still His enemies. But oh how few have believe it. Oh how few have listened.
Isaiah 53.

“Thank you Lord for saving my soul. Thank you Lord for making me whole. Thank you Lord for giving to me, your great salvation so full and free.”