Colossians 3 - part 4

Col 3:15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. (ESV)

I wrote about this verse earlier this week, but it struck me again this morning. Experiencing God's peace in this verse is clearly connected with living in unity. It then ends with, "be thankful." One of the reasons that the Christian community does not experience unity in peace is because we are not thankful, or because we are thankful for the wrong things.

In Luke 18 Jesus tells of the Pharisee who stood on the street corner praying, "I thank you that I am not like other men." He was thankful, but clearly not for anything that would lead to love, peace and unity. We gossip; we talk about what's wrong with people; we ruminate on others faults and secret sins; we pray that God would fix them, and we somehow believe that if God would just fix them then we could have peace and unity. We fail to recognize that our own failure to give thanks is undermining the very thing we claim to want.

What if we started thanking God for the people that irritate us rather than reviewing their faults? What if we told others what was good about people rather than what is wrong with them or how weird they are? What if we acknowledged to God that we are no better then anyone else instead of quoting the Pharisee's prayer? What if we rehearsed all the good things about a person instead if their faults? Maybe peace and unity is more closely connected to thanksgiving than we realized.

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the USA. Let's take a little time today to thank God for those irritating people in our lives, not just the comforts and fun people we know. Today let's truly be thankful.

By His grace,
Rick Weinert

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