T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
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O 'UR LORD as man, partaker of true humanity dur ing His incarnation here on earth, maintained the fundamental relationships to God that you and I as the children of God may and should maintain. He came to do'the will of God; He was often in prayer to God, sometimes all night; He continually rejoiced in the love of God; He was grateful to God for the gifts which the Father wás béstówing upon mankind and specifically upon Him as Son, and for the opportunity which God had given Him to serve men. At this Thanksgiving Season, we can .hardly ascertain in all the Word of God a more fit ting and precious term for meditation, than “The Thank fulness -of Jesús.” I believe it will be discovered that we hj^ve records of our Lord’s thankfulness on five occasions vftiich may be placed conveniently under four headings. Jesus Was Thankful for Food E At the feeding of the four thousand we read, “He com- miknded the multitude to sit down on the ground: He took thie seven loaves, and having given thanks, He brake and gave ,tp, .ljis. disciples, to set before them; and they set them before the multitude” (Mark 8:6; Matt. 15:36). In ttfe feeding of the 'five thousand, we have a similar phrase, “Jesus therefore took the loaves; and having given tflanks, ‘H e‘distributed to them that were set down; like wise also’ of the fishes as much as they would” (John 6:11). What words He uttered in this thanksgiving for food we d# not know, but John’s account of this prayer of thanks giving, offered bn tbé occasion of the feeding of the five thousand,‘ would lead us to believe that there must have been 'Something unusual, something of an overwhelming spiritual beauty, which awakened the hearts of those who heñrd the prayer to a new conception of communion with God, for in the twenty-third verse we have this comment, “fhere came boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place wftere they ate the bread, after the Lord had given thanks.”
Three times a day every Christian gives thanks to God for his food. I am told that an orthodox Jew gives thanks for each course set before him, and I would judge this to be true from observing a number of orthodox Jews on shipboard when going to Palestine; for they definitely seemed to offer thanks, first for fruit, then for cereal, and then for eggs. What is there in a provision of food, let us for simplicity’s sake say, in the provision of bread, that compels us to lift our hearts in gratitude to God? I think, first of all, we should be grateful to God for sending rain and giving sunshine at the right time through ,the months of growing, so that a harvest of nourishing wheat results. It is God who giveth rain from Heaven. Then I think that in this thanksgiving there is In cluded gratitude for that wheat being brought to our table in the form of bread for our nourishment; for you and I really had nothing to do with harvesting the wheat. This is more true today than when our Lord lived in Palestine. In fact, there are millions in our cities today who have never seen wheat grow, and the vast majority of people in our land and Britain have nothing whatever to do with any part of raising wheat, or manufacturing flour, or baking bread. All of this involves the strength of men who work in wheat fields plowing, sowing and harvesting, transportation from distant wheat fields to granaries in other parts of the country, and the preservation of the wheat while in storage. Then, it embraces the skill of - millers in extracting this flour from the kernels of wheat and the skill of bakers to make it appear in the form of bread. We ought to think more often than we do of how utterly dependent we all are on these various processes and labors in which we never participate, that allow us to be properly nourished with the staff of life. And then I believe we ought to give thanks to God as we partake of our daily food, for the pleasure which we derive from eating it. Somewhere Paley has a great pas sage on this thought, in which he sets forth as one of the '»roofs of the goodness of God, this fact, that not only
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