Happy Thanksgiving from Cornerstone University!
“What shall I render to the LORD for all his benefits to me? I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the LORD.”
Psalm 116:12, 17 (ESV)
Benefacio. This is the Latin origin of the English word benefit. The literal translation for benefacio is “to do good.” Thus, a benefit is the good received through the action of someone else or the good done to someone else through one’s own action.
All of us want to be beneficiaries – recipients of the goodness of others. And all of us should be benefactors – doers of good unto others.
Both receiving goodness from and doing good to others is life-giving and life-affirming. So, too, is gratitude.
There is something powerfully transcendent about being thankful. Rightly understood, gratitude both humbles and edifies. It makes one realize that all one enjoys is the result of the goodness of God and others. Gratitude confronts us with the reality that we are all beneficiaries of God and others, that we are ultimately debtors not creditors.
Gratitude also edifies. It is enriching to act upon our great privilege and responsibility to bless God and others. Thus, David writes in Psalm 103, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” And, in chapter 13 of the Letter to the Hebrews, we are directed to “not neglect to do good and to share what [we] have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
Since we are beneficiaries of the grace of God and others, we are to live sacrificially – to be benefactors – toward God and others. Gratitude confronts us with the reality that we are to be living sacrifices to God and for others, that we must – as Michael Card put it in his 1994 song, “The Basin and the Towel” – day after day “take up the basin and the towel.”
As we all gather to celebrate another Thanksgiving and regardless of our triumphs, losses, joys, tears, accomplishments, and failings, may we all reflect on the great debt we owe to God for His grace to us and the great debt we owe to so many for their grace and kindness to us. We are here because of God and them. And as we celebrate this Thanksgiving, may we all reflect on our great privilege and responsibility to love and serve God and to love and serve others.
During this Thanksgiving holiday, may we join the psalmist in offering the sacrifice of Thanksgiving to our LORD and calling upon His name. God’s benefits to us are great!
May you and your loved ones have a blessed Thanksgiving!
Gerson Moreno-Riaño, Ph.D.
President
