Before you sit down to eat, savor this vision of gratitude.
Thanksgiving looks backward into our nation’s history. Yet for believers, this holiday can also provide an opportunity to look forward to the greatest feast yet to come.
My wife and I have been daydreaming about our upcoming Thanksgiving dinner. Finally, that meal is almost upon us!
Tonight, our kitchen is about to be overtaken by sliced vegetables, and boxes of dried bread for stuffing, along with the aromas of pumpkin, sage, and simmering sauces. and all sorts of baggies filled with dried cranberries and apricots.
All of this is in preparation for tomorrow—when our house will be full of family, warm food, and hungry stomachs.
That meal can’t come soon enough.
One of my favorite traditions each Thanksgiving is reading Isaiah 25:6-9 before we sit down and eat. Usually, when I read these verses to our guests, I’m fighting back tears because the vision is so beautiful that it overwhelms me.
Isaiah 25:6-9 gives us a vision of gratitude to come. This gratitude will come to completion through an incredible feast at His table. It’s not just any feast … if we are believers in Jesus Christ, we’re going to enjoy the most satisfying feast ever, the summit of all feasts:
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
But not everyone is invited to that ultimate feast.
The feast described in Isaiah 25:6-9 is only for those who have trusted Christ Jesus as their Lord and Savior. That feast celebrates the believers’ rest in Jesus Christ’s victory through His cross. And that feast celebrates Jesus Christ’s ultimate victory over death, suffering, and shame—a victory that ushers in eternal gladness and joy for all believers.
That feast can’t come soon enough.
Yet I can’t assume that everyone who reads this believes in Jesus.
If you haven’t yet put your full trust in Jesus who died for your sins, now is the time to do so.
When I write about “trusting” Jesus, I mean that you’re completely relying on Jesus’s death as the complete and satisfying payment for your sins.
Isiah 53:4-6 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
1 Timothy 1:15-16: The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.
Romans 10:9: ... if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Romans 10:13: For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Again, if you haven’t yet fully trusted Jesus as your Lord and Savior … please come to Him today. Jesus promised to never reject anyone who comes to Him (John 6:37).
Then after you come to Jesus, settle down for that Thanksgiving meal—as I plan to—and give thanks for God’s salvation. Your meal tomorrow is only a slight foretaste of what’s to come for those whose hope is in Jesus Christ.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Byron Garmo, President & CEO of Mission to Children
