We no longer live in an agrarian society, and in some ways this has disconected us from the laws that govern nature and life. In nature, things take time to grow, change, and develop. A tree can take decades to reach its full height, it takes a person several decades of life before they can become a biological grandparent. Thanksgiving, as a holiday, is placed in the calendar as a vestige of this aforeknown reality.

Thanksgiving comes in the autumn, after the harvest of most produce has taken place, in recognition of the fact that so many things could have gone wrong from the time of planting to the harvest. The seed might have been bad, there may have been a late frost, there may have been a drought, a disease might have struck the plant, there might have been some pest that ate the crop, and so on. There are many factors that have to fall into place for a harvest to happen. Since many of these factors were outside of the control of the farmers, they attributed the success or failure to God. Thus Thanksgiving was an opportunity to recognize God's blessings in that year's harvest.

With technological advancement, humans have taken steps to avert some of the potential problems that caused crops to fail in previous years. Greenhouses, genetically modified plants, irrigation, herbicides, insecticides, and other scientific know-how have been applied in an attempt to guarantee food and survival. In so doing, the dependence for survival has shifted from God to human ingenuity and wisdom. Yet these "advancements" have not brought the promised results. There is discussion regarding the negative effects of chemicals on food and the environment, the adverse effects of genetically modified foods on the consumers and uncultivated plant species. The "progress" has not delivered, and world hunger continues to advance.

The apostle Paul wrote that when people denied God's existence, and the evidence of Him in nature, they would still worship something. The object of worship then becomes fellow creatures, or even themselves, rather than God the Creator (Rom 1:25). People place fellow humans ("experts") and science in the place of God, and depend on them for everything. This same way of thinking gets applied to other areas of life, and in so many areas we no longer look to God for all that we have and need, instead we want quick solutions that we can buy, fake, microwave, or force our way to. We then have nothing to thank God for, because we think we did it all ourselves. Could it be that if we trusted God more, things would go better for us in the long run, and our dependence would not be so much on our own strength?

This Thanksgiving, let us take some time to reflect on where our trust is, where our blessings come from, and how life functions best (Prov 3:5-6; 24:30-34).