Welcome to the Daily Article podcast for Monday, November the 21st, 2022.

This is Chris Elkins with the Denison Forum narrating today's article written by Dr. Jim Denison.

On this Thanksgiving week, the last thing you want to think about this morning is another mass shooting.

This is the last thing I wanted

to write about as well, but it feels disrespectful to the victims and their families not to

acknowledge the horrific tragedies of recent days. From the nightclub shooting in Colorado Springs

on Saturday that killed five and injured 25 people, to the deaths of three University of Virginia football players,

to the killing of four University of Idaho students a week ago, heartbreak has dominated our

recent headlines. We are commanded in 1st Cessalonians 518 to give thanks in all circumstances

for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

When I read this text in hard times, I take refuge in the fact that we are to give thanks

in all circumstances, not for them. God's word does not require us to be thankful for tragedies

and suffering. However, Paul also left us instructions

from Ephesians 520, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father. Here we are told

to give thanks always in every moment and circumstance. We're to do so for everything with no

exceptions. Does God really expect us to give thanks for mass murder?

For a pandemic that has taken more than a million American lives?

For an immoral and illegal Russian invasion that has killed 40,000 Ukrainian civilians

and displaced 15 to 30 million people for North Korea's escalating threat

to launch nuclear weapons against the U.S. and our allies? As is so often the case,

context is the key to interpreting a biblical text. Paul's instruction in Ephesians 520 to give

thanks always and for everything is preceded in

...