Is it thankful thinking or wishful thinking?

Photo by Rumman Amin on Unsplash

Marketing works best when it gets us to think about what we lack.

Marketing gets us to think about what we lack now and quickly imagine how a good or service will make our wishes come true later. Giving thanks becomes more like wishful thinking about the future. “Thanks in advance.”

Marketing may be the maker of the default setting in the American mind.

When we are very young–so young that we may not even know our ABC’S–we learn how to learn what we do not have. We learn how to imagine a future when we get what we do not have here and now.

This is how I gave thanks when I was young.

I thanked God for a big, long future in which I expected to get everything that I dreamed would make me happy and whole.

The problem now is that I am no longer young.

How do I give thanks now when the future is getting smaller and smaller?

Some of the people I love the most in this world have very little future left.

How do they give thanks?

This is a crisis for the consumer mind, the marketing mind, the mind that expects to meet all of its needs and wants in the future. The mind that makes thankful thinking the same as wishful thinking.

The Christian mind–the mind that imitates the way the Christ thinks–is not the same as the consumer mind.

The Christ teaches us to give thanks this day for our daily bread.

The Christ teaches us to neither wish nor worry for the future; to do so is to miss the blessings we may find on this day.

None of us are alive in the future because none of us live in the future; we are alive here and now. Life is in the present. Thanksgiving is here, too.

Thanksgiving–the kind that awakens us to joy and peace “that passeth understanding”–is giving thanks here and now for here and now.

Grace and peace to you and the people you love this Thanksgiving.