Louisa and I set our alarms to rise early this morning. We needed to stuff two 20 pound turkeys, peel 15 pounds of potatoes, and finish preparations for an extended family Thanksgiving dinner. Cooking side-by-side made it fun, and we chatted away through the hours.
I thought of the rest of the world and how so many don’t have a chance to sit at a dinner table like most Americans do on Thanksgiving. Some people have never known that very-full feeling we all experience on this day of feasting, and it’s almost embarrassing to say we experience it often.
Thanksgiving fell on an early date this year, because November 1 was a Thursday. So when I opened my Spurgeon devotional today, I didn’t expect it to be about the holiday. After all, he was writing from England, where Thanksgiving doesn’t exist. But lo and behold, his thoughts were perfect:
“Hunger is by no means a pleasant sensation. Yet blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness. Such persons shall not only have their hunger relieved with a little food, but they shall be… filled with goodness by Jehovah himself.” *
If only we made it our top priority to “get filled” the biblical way rather than trying to fill ourselves by satisfying hungers that are inappropriate, out of proportion, or even sinful. Attempting to find satisfaction by indulging in the wrong things does bring a measure of pleasure at the time, but the feeling never lasts. Badly chosen pleasures don’t fill us for long, because they don’t address the hunger pangs of the heart and soul.
There’s only one way to satisfy those hunger pangs, and Spurgeon said it well: “The Lord will satisfy soul-longings, however great and all-absorbing they may be.”
That super-full feeling after a big meal eventually disappears, and tomorrow our stomachs will growl again and we’ll be quick to fill them up. No matter how much we eat, we’ll always be hungry in a few hours, because stomach-satisfaction is short lived. And though we don’t think so at the time, other pursuits to get satisfied apart from the Lord’s doing it are just as repeatedly needy as a stomach.
We don’t like to experience hunger pangs, but God actually encourages them, at least spiritual hunger pangs. Spurgeon says, “It is well to have [soul]-longings, and the more intense they are the better. Come, let us not fret because we long and hunger, but let us long and hunger to see God magnified [in our lives].”
On this Thanksgiving night, I’m most thankful not for the lavish feast we consumed today but for the ongoing banquet the Lord offers to anyone who seeks to satisfy soul-hunger through him.
By the way, while I’m speaking of being thankful, the clean-up crew was pretty high on my list, too!
“The Lord satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.” (Psalm 107:9)
* Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith, Daily Readings by C.H.Spurgeon
Psalm 63:5
{God,} “You satisfy me more than the richest feast.
I will praise you with songs of joy.”
I love the little helper climbing into the dishwasher. So glad you were in the midst of family yesterday.
What a JOY it is to share God’s blessings of family,food, friends and satisfaction of our souls! Whatever kind of meal is shared, the amount of consumption isn’t so important as the thankfulness of having one.
This year being very different; a BRUNCH – at grandson’s home, no turkey and all the trimmings, but what fun it was! Good food, to be sure, playng with the great-grands, visiting with family and a quiet afternoon of rest.
The key to the day was not the food, but thankfulness for what we have, sharing it and being together in unity of spirit.
A memorable Thanksgiving – for sure!!
Great post Mom. Solomon said ‘the soul of the diligent shall be made fat’ may we all feel a bit more hungry for ‘the banquet’ of Jesus. Isaiah 55 – ‘Come and buy without money!’
So maybe tryptophan of the soul is the Anglicized version of what the psalmist was after….as we drove home, post feast, it dawned on us that all the drivers sharing the road with us also had possibly eaten beyond the limits, and were at least partially impaired in the alertness category! So we made a game out of watching the cars on the road for signs of slippage. We should have known it would be a motorcycle, at 95 mph, not a car, which was attempting to defy all the laws of physics and go where man (or machine) had not dared go before! Mercifully, there were no tragic effects from his need for speed, but it did give us time to review the round of thanks the family/friends gathering had shared, and to again thank God for ALL his blessings (one was grateful to be finishing college after 8 long years!) including a granddaughter heading for a first time missions trip in the spring, and my deep gratitude for a father who trusted God and is now with Him for the first time, and possibly more grateful than any of the rest of us could imagine!