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Thanksgiving Day

             And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:17)

          “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything.” We’ve all heard some variation of this saying. I like the version that uses double negatives: “If you don’t have nothing good to say, don’t say nothing,” but that doesn’t mean what we want it to mean. Another somewhat similar instruction is “Be nice.” The problem with all these sorts of instructions, including, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, is definition. What constitutes something “good to say”? Or “Nice”? And what if what you would have others do to you is to leave you alone, but the person next door wants people to stop by and chat?  

          The greatest commandment, according to Jesus, is that we love God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strengths, and love our neighbors as ourselves. In today’s verse, we’re told to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, meaning that everything we do should be what Jesus would do if He were in our shoes. But Jesus wasn’t always “nice” and didn’t refrain from saying things His audience wouldn’t (and didn’t) like.  At the same time, I believe that Jesus obeyed these teachings with one tiny difference: He did things in the name of the Father.

          Getting back to the verse of the day, here’s the question. When Paul wrote “whatever…in word or deed,” what is left out? In case it’s not obvious, according to Merriam Webster, a deed is “something that is done.”  Another source mentioned consciously or deliberately, so for the sake of the argument, we’ll exclude automatic biological functions. Volition is at least marginally involved. At the risk of being too obvious, everything else, including thinking and speaking counts as a deed.

          Thinking is the toughest one, because our bodies don’t really tend to wander too far without our realizing it. Our bodies may say “Feed me!” and take us to the kitchen when we aren’t really hungry, but we know where we’re going. On the other hand, our emotions and our thoughts are known to travel miles, or even light years, between one thought and the next. I start out praying for someone and the next thing you know, I’m two blocks from where I was praying and pulling my thoughts back from a conversation with someone who isn’t there. This may be a challenge for us for 2026, and the test we might apply to our thoughts, our feelings, and the things that come out of our mouths is a simple one. Can we give thanks to God the Father for them?

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