From editorial director of news Kate Shellnutt: Even with a holiday dedicated to thankfulness, Americans often settle for a very shallow form of gratitude. Some Thanksgiving celebrations this week will have no outright expressions of thanks. Some will settle for the "one thing you’re thankful for" activity around the table.
In his piece this week, O. Alan Noble challenges us to think more of gratitude, to see the practice as living in prayer and humility rather than remembering to recite a "Thank you." I might suggest one other habit to fuel our gratitude: asking God for the things we still want.
Of all the gratitude-themed articles CT has run over the years, the one that sticks with me the most is the most counterintuitive: "Even on Thanksgiving, It’s Okay to Ask for More." Megan Evans Hill, now an editor at The Gospel Coalition, suggests that petition fuels our gratefulness as well.
"Thanksgiving and petition are not at odds. In fact, they flourish when they are together—the twin children of our dependence on a gracious God," she writes. "Without petition, we begin to imagine that God is a God who occasionally cares for us—who handed out candy or sunshine last week or last month—but whose constant provision is not vital to our life. When we petition God, we acknowledge that our God is a God who must hold us in his hand at every moment."
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November 24, 1531: Johannes Oecolampadius, a leader in the Swiss Reformation, dies at 49. He sided with Ulrich Zwingli in disputing Martin Luther on the Lord’s Supper and also helped Erasmus edit the New Testament in Greek (see issue 4: Ulrich Zwingli).
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Six years ago, Jason Wilson taught men how to cry. These days, he’s also training boys to fight—not just on the outside but from within. Wilson teaches young men martial…
According to his Spotify profile, Solomon Ray is a "Mississippi-made soul singer carrying a Southern soul revival into the present." His most recent release, a Christmas EP called A Soulful…
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in the magazine
As we enter the holiday season, we consider how the places to which we belong shape us—and how we can be the face of welcome in a broken world. In this issue, you’ll read about how a monastery on Patmos offers quiet in a world of noise and, from Ann Voskamp, how God’s will is a place to find home. Read about modern missions terminology in our roundtable feature and about an astrophysicist’s thoughts on the Incarnation. Be sure to linger over Andy Olsen’s reported feature "An American Deportation" as we consider Christian responses to immigration policies. May we practice hospitality wherever we find ourselves.
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