I’m Grateful for Politics!

You’ve budgeted, battled through grocery store aisles, waited in a long line, paid the price, loaded up the car, organized your bounty at home, and baked an incredible meal.

It’s time to feast, guilt-free, with those who are most important in your life: your family.

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a day to relax, smile, and tell your family members why you’re grateful for them. Meal served, (it smells so good!) you lift your glass, ready to toast to all your grateful for, when one of your relatives scowls and proclaims, “I’m grateful for politics!” Usually, they declare this with a thousand words more that are often followed by a slammed fist on the table.

You’re left with a choice: Either let the meal you’ve worked so hard on grow cold or eat now and get indigestion.

Happy Thanksgiving?

Definitely not.

How many of you have driven through bumper-to-bumper traffic, flown hundreds, even thousands of miles to show how grateful you are for family, just to have a family member put a politician, whom of which couldn’t care less about this individual, above you.

Is this really how we want to spend our holiday?

Is Thanksgiving about flesh and blood, or ideology and political activism?

Which will you choose?

Far too many pick politics over family.

On Thanksgiving, most Americans fight with their relatives one day, just to fight complete strangers over Made in China junk the next.

What a life!

What misery!

Perhaps it’s time to change…

Thanksgiving is an American holiday that is celebrated by every demographic and faith. It’s as non-partisan as a holiday can get.

So why make it about politics?

Instead of using the one day out of the year when your entire family is together to hold them captive at the dining room table by grandstanding how you believe they should think, maybe, just maybe, you should use this time to get to know what really matters about your family, like their personal lives. Perhaps the large gathering could be used as a chance to edify and encourage those who mean the most to you.

Imagine, if every American did that, how uplifted and joyful the Thanksgiving feast would be!

Indigestion? Not here!

This Thanksgiving, leave politics at the door.

Politicians rule enough of our lives as it is. Don’t give them the spotlight on Thanksgiving. Frankly, they don’t deserve it. Your family, however, does.

But giving thanks is a sacrifice that truly honors me. Psalm 50:23 NLT

Christians should have the blueprint for Thanksgiving down! If we don’t, it’s time for prayer, fasting, and personal reflection BEFORE we sit across the table from our non-Christian relatives as ambassadors of Christ.

Use this time together to shine a spotlight on what you’re most grateful for in every individual across the table. Even if they’re living in a way you disagree with, you’re not going to change that by ruining their holiday.

To those who live most days as a cheerleader for their political ideology, the same rule applies: you’re not going to change how someone votes by destroying their Thanksgiving.

This year, leave the script your political party has written behind and love your family, even the ones who vote differently than you.

We’re mature enough to do that for one meal, aren’t we?

I believe we are.

If you have a relative that lacks that maturity and is viciously political no matter how civil everyone else is, don’t invite them to your table or dine at theirs.

No politician is worth getting indigestion over. Especially not with how much money and time went into that meal and the travel to get to it.

After all:

Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting, with strife. Proverbs 17:1 NIV

This Thanksgiving, seek peace.