Throughout Scripture, the people of God are depicted as strangers and aliens.*

These terms carry the idea of a person not simply passing through but a foreigner who has settled down, however briefly, among the local population.

Such is the accurate image of the Christ-follower today amid our crooked and perverse generation, which does not honor God or give thanks to Him but instead has exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:21-25).

As we celebrate today what Abraham Lincoln described as “a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens,” let us make the following passage from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus our prayer:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. 

In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. 

In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. 

In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. 

In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory. (Ephesians 1:3-14)

* Genesis 12:1; Acts 7:2-3; Luke 14:26,27,33, Lev 25:23, Hebrews 11:9,10,13 Genesis 23:4; 47:9; Lev 25:23; 1Chr 29:15, Ps 39:12; 119:19, 54