Happy Thanksgiving! I pray that you are enjoying a day of fellowship with friends or family. If not, I pray that you are enjoying a day of joyful relationship with our Lord. Either way, Thanksgiving Day is one that gives us an opportunity to reflect and give thanks to our God who gave everything to give us everything.

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As we lead up to the Christmas season, we've been discovering how God uses all sorts of people for His own good and perfect purpose. One example, the lineage of Jesus Christ, is given in Matthew 1. It's a collection of patriarchs, kings, tricksters, celebrities, non-celebrities, righteous, unrighteous, famous, and obscure. God used them all.

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Within that lineage falls Jesse, son of Obed, and father of David. David would go on to become God's anointed and be known to history as the greatest king of the Israelites. But that almost didn't happen and to understand why, we need to focus on Jesse.

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Jesse was a rancher living in the quiet hills of Bethlehem. He had eight sons, the youngest of whom was David. God sent the prophet Samuel to Jesse's home to find and anoint the next King of Israel. Samuel hosted a sacrifice unto the Lord and invited Jesse and all his sons to attend. Since the first seven sons of Jesse were strong and kingly in appearance, and David a mere shepherd, Jesse left David behind. Samuel presented each of the seven sons to God in turn but was surprised when God rejected each one in turn. Perplexed, Samuel asked Jesse if these were all his sons. Jesse revealed that there was one more, David, who was tending to the sheep. Samuel asked to meet him; David was summoned, presented before the Lord, and in 1 Samuel 16:12-13, Samuel obeys God's instruction and anoints David.

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Though I don't believe Jesse acted with intentional malice, it's interesting that Jesse seemingly didn't see David as kingly, and so left him behind. If Samuel hadn't asked if there were any more sons, would David have been anointed? It's also interesting that Isaiah compares Jesse to a “stump.” A stump, as we know, is the dead leftover from a downed tree. What if Jesse didn't tell Samuel about David? Would the lineage have died like a stump right there? Thankfully, what might have been, wasn't. Jesse did tell Samuel about David and presented him with no objection. Centuries later, Jesse's obedience to Samuel allowed Isaiah to write, “from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” That fruit is Jesus Christ.

Like Jesse, sometimes we don't know what we've got until someone points it out to us. And sometimes we look at things through a worldly lens. Even Samuel thought this way when he presented Jesse's oldest son Eliab and had to be reminded: “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart’” (1 Sam. 16:7).

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So, whether you are enjoying a day of festivity with friends, family, or just our Lord; or, maybe you're struggling with something serious on this day of thanksgiving, I want to point something out to you: you are King David in the eyes of our Father.

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“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 Jn. 3:1).

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And as a child of God, you have an inheritance with your Father for eternity: “For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant” (Heb. 9:15).

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Because you are so precious to Him, Christ, a shoot from the stump of Jesse, bought you with his blood. You are paid for in full.

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Now that's something to be thankful for!

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“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever” (Ps. 136:1).