My wife and I started Season 5 of The Crown over the weekend. Like most viewers, we were surprised to learn that the Sunday Times took a poll in 1991 suggesting that half of the British public wanted Queen Elizabeth II to abdicate in favor of Prince Charles. In response, Charles met with Prime Minister John Major to persuade him to encourage the queen to step down.

Except nothing I just wrote is really true.

According to the Washington Post, the poll was taken in January 1990, not August 1991. It did reveal that nearly half of the public said the queen should consider abdicating in favor of Charles. But the Post reports that “importantly, they said she should consider ‘eventually,’ not necessarily at that very moment. The ‘eventually’ has been left out in the show.” And according to Major, the meeting with Charles portrayed in the show never happened, calling it a “barrel-load of nonsense.”

To continue with royal “news”: a new biography of King Charles III claims that the monarch once “destroyed a sink because he lost a cufflink down the drain.” But as we learn from The Crown, claiming something is true doesn’t make it true.

These stories do raise a personal question: Aren’t you glad no one is publishing a tell-all exposé of your life? That no one knows the secrets you’re keeping from the rest of us?

Actually, someone does.

“HAPPY BIRT, JESUS”

As we move into the Christmas season, this Washington Post headline caught my eye: “A decade’s worth of photos capture Christmas in America, from the joyful to the bleak.” Photographer Jesse Rieser traveled to eighteen states from Oregon to Florida to capture images of Christmas across the country.

The book he published as a result shows us an inflatable Santa Claus looming four stories over a Christmas tree lot, a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex dressed in a Santa costume, and a display of soldiers guarding Santa and his reindeer called “Protecting Dreams.”

Rieser titled his book Christmas in America: Happy Birthday, Jesus. According to the Post, the title originated from “one of Rieser’s favorite photos.” In it, neon red lights spell “HAPPY BIRT, JESUS” over the roof of a white garage, with the missing four letters laying atop the shingles. This is the only reference to our Lord in the Post story.

If you were to publish images of Christmas from Scripture, what verse would be on the cover? My answer is a text that will revolutionize the Christmas season for everyone who takes it to mind and heart today.

“The Lamb slain from the creation of the world”

A preacher once told the story of a mother on her deathbed. Her husband stood on one side, their estranged son on the other. In her last act, she took the hand of the angry father and the hand of the wayward child and brought them together over her body.

In the same way, he said, Jesus on the cross took the hand of a wrathful Father and the hand of sinful humanity and brought them together over his body.

But that’s not what happened.

Recall the most famous verse in Scripture: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). This familiar declaration reminds us of the why behind the what of Christmas and supplies a vital corrective to the way many in our culture view our Father.

In short: Christmas was God’s idea. Jesus was “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8 NIV). As Jesus explained, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).

From his conception to his crucifixion, Jesus’ incarnation was his Father’s plan for our salvation.

“No creature is hidden from his sight”

Why does the God of the universe love us so much that he sent his Son to die so we could live eternally with him?

Is it because we deserve such love? Categorically not. Unlike a tell-all biographer exposing (or fabricating) the royal family’s secrets, the omniscient God of the universe knows the absolute truth about every single one of us: “No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13).

Your Father knows not only the deepest secrets of your past—he knows the most grievous sins and failures that are in your future. And yet, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He did this because “God is love” (1 John 4:8). He loves us because it is his unchanging nature to love us. Stated bluntly, he cannot not love us, no matter who we are or what we have done.

Jesus made this fact clear in John 17 when he prayed “that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (v. 23, my emphasis). The Greek is literally translated “and loved them as much as you loved me.”

Think of it: your Father loves you as much as he loves his “one and only Son” (John 3:16 NIV).

“Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!”

Here’s the point: if we had to earn God’s love, we could lose his love. If the Christmas gift of our Father was given on the basis of merit, none of us could receive it or hope to retain it. But because God “is” love, there is absolutely nothing we can do to make him love us any more or any less than he already does.

So, as we step into the Christmas season, let’s make time every day to remember the why of Christmas. Let’s reflect on the unchanging, unconditional love of our Father for us. Let’s respond with the grateful worship of our souls. And let’s pay forward this gift by sharing it with everyone we can.

In response to “the surpassing grace of God,” Paul exclaimed, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:14–15).

Do his words express your heart today?

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For more than fifty years, Bob Vogelbaugh has made sure that his Moline, Illinois, community is well fed on Thanksgiving Day.

The former grocery store owner started this tradition in 1970 to include some of his customers who were going to be alone on Thanksgiving Day. What began as a small gathering inside his grocery store has grown to fill an entire food court in an area mall. He and his volunteers served more than 3,200 people this year.

“It’s not a charity dinner,” he said. “It’s just a Thanksgiving gathering of friends and people you don’t know and some people have become friends through this over the years.”

“It will not always be like this”

A pastor was famous for beginning every Sunday service with an invocation focused on thanksgiving. He would give thanks to God for events across the week, occurrences in the life of the church, and even the good weather.

However, one Sunday morning the congregation gathered in the midst of a terrible blizzard. The roads were icy; most people could not even make it to church. As the pastor stepped to the pulpit to offer his customary invocation, the few members in attendance wondered to themselves what reasons he could possibly find to give thanks on this miserable day.

The pastor began his prayer by describing the weather in all its ferocity. Then he paused and prayed, “And, dear Lord, we thank you that it is not always like this.”

November saw thirty-three mass shootings; there have been 606 so far this year. A new report warns that the threat of a measles outbreak is growing due to a significant decline in vaccination rates among children worldwide. Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are likely to escalate after Thanksgiving holiday gatherings. And a writer for the liberal magazine The Nation published an article on Thanksgiving Day titled, “We’re Thankful for Our Abortions.”

But it will not always be like this.

“The marriage supper of the Lamb”

Bob Vogelbaugh’s wonderful Thanksgiving tradition foreshadows the thanksgiving dinner of all dinners. One day, those who know Christ as their Lord will hear these words: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9).

This amazing invitation is best understood in its cultural context.

In Jesus’ day, what we would call an engagement began when a marriage contract was signed by the parents of the bride and the bridegroom. This was the period Joseph and Mary were in when she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18; Luke 2:5).

A year later, the bridegroom, accompanied by his male friends, went to the house of the bride at midnight, forming a torchlight parade through the streets. The bride and her maidens would join the parade, arriving at the bridegroom’s home. This is the background for Jesus’ parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1–13).

The third phase was the marriage supper itself, which could go on for days, as we see with the wedding in Cana (John 2:1–2).

In Revelation 19, the Lamb (Jesus) and his bride (the Church) are in this third phase. The first occurs when we place our faith in Christ as our Lord. The second symbolizes the return of our Lord to take us to his home in paradise (John 14:1–4). The third symbolizes our eternal celebration and worship in heaven, where we are gathered with “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9).

John described our eternal destination this way: “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away’” (Revelation 21:3–4).

“Standing at the throne of the spotless Lamb”

Like the pastor who began every Sunday service with gratitude, you and I can begin every day by giving thanks for all Jesus has done for us, all he is doing for us, and all he will do for us. And when we remember our future destiny, we are emboldened to trust our Lord in the midst of present challenges.

Consider this moving example.

St. Paul Le-Bao Tinh was born in 1793 in Vietnam. He became a Christian, then an ascetic monk, then a missionary. When persecution against Christians broke out in 1841, he was arrested and spent the next seven years in prison in Hanoi. While incarcerated, he wrote to a seminary student:

“The prison here is a true image of everlasting hell: to cruel tortures of every kind—shackles, iron chains, manacles—are added hatred, vengeance, calumnies, obscene speech, quarrels, evil acts, swearing, curses, as well as anguish and grief.” Then he added: “But the God who once freed the three children from the fiery furnace is with me always.”

He asked his reader, “Come to my aid with your prayers, that I may have the strength to fight according to the law and indeed to fight the good fight and to fight until the end and so finish the race.”

He concluded: “We may not see each other again in this life, but we will have the happiness of seeing each other again in the world to come, when, standing at the throne of the spotless Lamb, we will together join in singing his praises and exult forever in the joy of our triumph. Amen.”

Whatever you are facing today, remember: It will not always be like this. One day we will “exult forever in the joy of our triumph” with our Lord.

Why is this promise relevant to your soul today?

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Know that the Lᴏʀᴅ, he is God! (Psalm 100:3).

“We hope this price reduction provides much-needed relief at the pump for our customers as they travel for the Thanksgiving holiday.” This is how Travis Sheetz, president and CEO of the Sheetz gas station chain, explained his decision to drop the price of Unleaded 88 gas at hundreds of stations to $1.99. “Sheetz is a family owned and operated company and at the heart of everything we do is giving back to our customers and the communities we reside in,” he added.

In other good news, Southwest Airlines employees found a novel way to help a traveler. They noticed that a customer left a cell phone behind in a gate area. The flight was already boarded and pushed back from the gate. So they rushed the phone out to the plane; the pilot opened his window, reached down, and took the phone from them to return to its owner.

Such stories illustrate Henry Ward Beecher’s observation, “Let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.”

“The many and signal favors of Almighty God”

On this Thanksgiving Day, let’s be sure to remember the intended focus of the day.

Theologian Cornelius Plantinga Jr. observed, “It must be an odd feeling to be thankful to nobody in particular. Christians in public institutions often see this odd thing happening on Thanksgiving Day. Everyone in the institution seems to be thankful ‘in general.’ It’s very strange. It’s a little like being married in general.”

Our first president would have agreed. On November 16, 1789, President George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the government. He called upon Americans to express gratitude to God for the conclusion of their war of independence, declaring “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God.”

Psalm 100 frames such gratitude with three empowering descriptions of this God.

First, he is “Lᴏʀᴅ” (v. 3a), a title that translates the Hebrew word YHWH, often spelled “Yahweh.” This is the holiest name in all the Hebrew language. It means “the One who was, is, and is to come.” He is sovereign over all time and eternity, the Lord of your past, present, and future.

Second, he is “God” (v. 3b). This is the Hebrew word Elohim, meaning “one who is great, mighty, and dreadful.” This title points to our God’s creative and universal omnipotence.

Third, “the Lᴏʀᴅ is good” (v. 5). The word translated “good” means that God keeps his promises out of his character and nature. He is righteous, trustworthy, and holy.

Take time today to express your gratitude for who God is.

One hundred trillion cells

Next, the psalmist helps us focus on what God does.

First, he considers what God has done for us in the past: “He made us” (v. 3b). He created us, each and every one of us.

Consider that your body is made of one hundred trillion cells, three hundred million of which die every minute. Your brain possesses one hundred billion nerve cells. Each square inch of your skin contains twenty feet of blood vessels; placed end to end, your body’s blood vessels would measure sixty-two thousand miles. That’s how far your blood travels each day.

That same square inch of skin has an average of thirty-two million bacteria on it. And every year, 98 percent of the atoms in your body are replaced. Your God made all of that when he made you. David was right to pray, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).

Second, the psalmist calls us to gratitude for what God does for us in the present: “We are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (Psalm 100:3c).

This means that God knows us intimately and personally, as a shepherd knows his sheep. The shepherd lives with his sheep. He sleeps in their field and walks at their side. He weathers their storms, faces their enemies, and comforts their fears. He knows his sheep intimately.

In John 10 Jesus says of himself, “The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” (v. 3). Jesus knows your name. He knows every detail of your life. And he loves you intimately. Nothing shall ever separate you from his love (Romans 8:35–39).

“The half was never, never told”

Let’s close this Thanksgiving Day meditation with a powerful poem of praise:

My heart is overflowing with gratitude and praise,
To him whose loving kindness has followed all my days;
To him who gently leads me by cool and quiet rills
And with their balm of comfort my thirsty spirit fills. 

Within the vale of blessing, I walk beneath the light
Reflected from his glory, that shines forever bright.
I feel his constant presence wherever I may be;
How manifold his goodness, how rich his grace to me! 

My heart is overflowing with love and joy and song,
As if it heard an echo from yonder ransomed throng.
Its every chord is vocal with music’s sweetest lay,
And to its home of sunshine it longs to fly away. 

I feign would tell the story, and yet I know full well
The half was never, never told—the half I cannot tell.

Fanny Crosby wrote these words. Her eyes were blind. But her heart saw God and gave him thanks.

Does yours?

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