Thanksgiving and Liberty

Thanksgiving is upon us. Time to think about the importance of giving thanks.  And how that virtue relates to other things we prize in our lives.  There is a strong connection between the virtue of gratitude and liberty.  The one of the qualities of gratitude is freedom.  In a post by Luke Holladay, he says, “Genuine gratitude requires free will.  Nobody can be coerced into being thankful, and no amount of incentives can manufacture gratitude.  Because gratitude is a choice, we also the option to spurn thankfulness and believe we deserve all we have been given.” G.K. Chesterton said it well, “There are two ways to get enough.  One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”

Holladay reminds us that Congress proclaimed Thanksgiving to be holiday so it could be “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer … affording us an opportunity to peaceably establish a form of government for our safety and happiness.”  Says Holladay, “This Thanksgiving, let’s exercise our freedom by proclaiming gratitude.”