“And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full; Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.”–Deuteronomy 6:10–12
In his 1923 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, President Calvin Coolidge wrote, “We will do well then to render thanks for the good that has come to us, and show by our actions that we have become stronger, wiser, and truer by the chastenings which have been imposed upon us. We will thus prepare ourselves for the part we must take in a world which forever needs the full measure of service. We have been a most favored people. We ought to be a most generous people. We have been a most blessed people. We ought to be a most thankful people.”
When we are blessed, there is a great danger that we will come to accept those blessings as the way things should be rather than realizing that we only have them because of the mercy and love of our Father in Heaven. The Israelites were warned that there was temptation lurking in the bounty they would find within the Promised Land—the temptation to forget that it was all because of God.
The cure to the sin of ingratitude begins with remembrance. It is not by accident that Moses reminded the Israelites of their deliverance from Egypt. If we remember that God’s grace brought us out of bondage to sin, we will not find it hard to be thankful.– by Dr. Paul Chappell
