MTM - Give Thanks unto the Lord for He is Good

Gratitude sounds simple until stories from the field reset your compass. We open the pantry, feel the mattress under our back, turn a clean tap, and then remember widows in Haiti boiling roots to calm a hollow ache. The contrast isn’t meant to shame; it’s meant to wake us up. When abundance becomes invisible, we forget how to see it—and how to share it.

I walk through the everyday mercies that carry us: food security, a roof that keeps out the rain, sanitation that quietly prevents disease, and shoes that protect every step. Along the way, I share moments from medical missions in Haiti and Central America—dirt floors, charcoal fires, open rivers used for drinking and washing—that reframe complaints about convenience. We talk about health in plain terms, from foot fungus to clean water, and why infrastructure may be one of the most compassionate forms of care. Then we turn to the gifts stitched into our bodies: eyes that take in sunrise, ears that catch laughter, a voice that can praise.

The story widens to formation and faith. I reflect on being raised by Christian parents, learning Scripture, finding mentors, and discovering a lifelong hunger for biographies of believers and missionaries. That heritage could have been otherwise; many are born where the gospel is absent or opposed. Which brings us to the heart of the conversation: the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus. If life held loss from start to finish and still ended with redemption, it would not be wasted. Possessions, achievements, even family cannot answer the final question; grace does. Gratitude becomes more than a mood—it becomes an anchor strong enough for joy and sorrow.

If this resonates, share it with someone who needs perspective today. Subscribe for more stories and biblical insights, and leave a review to help others find the show. What ordinary gift are you most thankful for right now?

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Psalm Of Thanks
• 0:32 Thankful For Food Versus Haiti’s Hunger
• 2:50 Shelter, Water, And Sanitation Contrasts
• 5:30 Shoes, Health, And Everyday Abilities
• 7:49 Grateful To Be Raised In The Faith
• 10:23 The Supremacy Of Knowing Jesus
• 13:41 Family Blessings And Final Hope
• 15:09 Closing And Resources

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:03

Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills that plague our culture and our country. Hosted by author and physician Dr. Robert Jackson and his wife Carlotta and daughter Hannah Miller. So listen up because the doctor is dead.

SPEAKER_02: 0:21

Welcome to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson, bringing to you biblical insights and stories from the Country Doctor's Rusty, Dusty Scrapbook. Well, this is Thanksgiving weekend, and I want to rehearse the simple things that we should be thankful for. Let me read a scripture to you from Psalms one hundred five and verse one. O give thanks to the Lord. Call upon his name. Make known his deeds among the people. Oh give thanks to the Lord and call upon his name. Now keep that scripture in mind, and I want to rehearse with you just some of the things that I'm thankful for. I'm thankful that my pantry has abundant food on the shelves, and my refrigerator has food on every shelf, and the freezer is completely full. Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good. But seeing patients in Haiti on a mission trip has impacted me in a big way. For you see, when I was there on a medical mission trip, there was a standard question that I had to ask every patient that was a widow. And the question was when did you eat last? And it was not unusual for the widows to say to me that they had not eaten for two days or even three days. And that would break my heart. But the follow up question was what did you eat last? And the standard reply was roots. For you see, these widow women who had no husband, they had no government organization that would come behind them to provide them with any kind of financial support, they would dig in the ground and they would dig up roots, they would boil them, and then eat them. The problem was that there was no nutritional value whatsoever in the roots. It was just something to fill their stomach. Everyone on the northern plateau of Haiti where we were ministering on these mission trips was skinny. There were absolutely no overweight people on the northern plateau. And it was because there was inadequate food supply. There was no obesity epidemic in northern Haiti as there is in the United States. Now in the rural the federal rural health clinic where I work, we're required to ask our patients if they have food scarcity. My three hundred and fifty pound patients often tell me yes. And I have to laugh. I I know that they're having uh a terrible time deciding between groceries and their two hundred dollars a month iPhone payments and their hundred dollar a month uh cable bill. And I I have I say to myself, maybe I should take them to Haiti for a week, and that would uh maybe cure their complaining for a lifetime. Now let's move on. Number two, I'm thankful for my comfortable bed with a mattress and a pillow and bed covers. I'm thankful for my house with a roof and it's just structurally sound and has a good foundation. For you see, when I was in Haiti, I passed mile after mile of thatched roof houses made of sticks stuck in the ground and thin wooden slats woven in between the sticks and mud stuck in the slats, and every one of them had a hard packed dirt floor, and every one of them lacked furniture. No furniture at all. And everyone slept on rolled up straw pallets. Even the aged grandparents slept on that hard dirt floor on a thin straw pallet. There was a constant parade of young women in the streets walking to the river with five gallon plastic buckets on their heads to get water for drinking and washing, because there was no indoor plumbing. The toilet was just a hole in the ground behind every house. The kitchen was another hole in the ground with a perpetual charcoal fire. I'm thankful for clean drinking water, which is was scarce in many parts of the world, not just Haiti, which also explains why infectious diseases still claim the lives of many children and elderly adults in third world countries. Diseases like malaria and amoebic dysentery, which you never think of anymore in America, but improved sanitation and clean drinking water have eliminated those problems in our country. In Haiti, the young girls dip water from the river, while upstream entire families are both bathing and washing clothes. You see, I'm thankful for decent shoes. In multiple different Central American countries to which I've been to provide medical care and Bible teaching, the people can't afford decent shoe gear. Almost everyone goes barefoot or wears some kind of open toe sandals. Subsequently everyone has foot fungus, cracked and fissured skin on their feet and is in the need of anti fungal medication. It was a common sight to see adults and children sitting with some kind of object in their hands scratching at their itching feet. I'm thankful that I have eyes that see, ears that hear, and a voice that can sing God's praise. For you see, I have patients that have been blind since birth, that have never seen their mother, their mother's face, or the sunrise, or the bright moon at night. I have patients deaf from birth, that have never heard their father's laughter, or their siblings chatter, or little birds singing in the early morning. I have patients mute from birth, who never utter a sound, never utter an intelligible word, who never speak their name or anyone's name. They cannot even say the name of Jesus or praise the Lord audibly with their lips. I have a patient who is deaf and mute from birth, who's a shift manager at a distribution center. She communicates with sign language and an iPad. She's very animated and she waves her arms a lot, and she makes me proud of her and sad at the same time. Sometimes I just feel dumb when I don't understand her sign language, and she rolls her eyes and has to type it out on her iPad. It makes me thankful for eyes that see and ears that hear and a tongue that can sing God's praise. Psalms one hundred six and verse one says Praise the Lord, O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His loving kindness is everlasting. I'll tell you another thing, I'm thankful that I was born in the USA, as the popular country song says. Why would I say that? Well you see, I could have been born in Mumbai or New Delhi in India, and been raised Hindu or Muslim without any contact with Christianity, and no hope of ever meeting a Christian or a Christian missionary my entire life. I could have been born in the Middle East and taught from my mother's breast to hate the Zionist Jews, and I've been taught that America is the great Satan. I could have been taught from my youth that the most certain way to go to heaven was to kill Christians and Jews in jihad or holy war. Instead, I am eternally grateful that I was raised by God fearing Christian parents who took me to church every Sunday. My mother even played the organ in church for ten years of my growing up years. I even had ten years of perfect attendance pens in Sunday school from age five to age fifteen. Imagine that. At age eleven, just before my father went to Vietnam during the Vietnam War, my parents invited our pastor to come speak to me about my spiritual life on a rainy Saturday morning. The pastor rehearsed the gospel message with me, nodded to my parents that he was satisfied that I understood, and then led me in a sinner's prayer. From that day on my life began to change. Suddenly I wanted to read my Bible every night before bedtime. I had this strange desire to talk to my friends about their spiritual life and how they could know Jesus. I started offering to pray out loud in youth group. A few years later, my dad started me on a lifetime habit of reading books about great Christians, Christian biographies and about Christian missionaries. Could any of that have happened to me if I was born to Muslim or Hindu parents in the Middle East or in India? I'm doubtful. You see, I'm eternally grateful, eternally thankful that I was born in South Carolina in the buckle of the Bible belt to Christian parents who went to church every Sunday and raised me to love Jesus, to love the Bible and to love the local church. In first Thessalonians chapter five and verse eighteen, Paul said, In everything give thanks, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. You see, there's so many things for you and me to be thankful for that we don't even have time to list them all. But listen, the number one thing that I'm thankful for is for Jesus, who loved us and gave Himself for us. For Jesus who purchased our redemption and who washed us as white as snow by the blood of the cross. I'm thankful for Jesus who made it possible for us to be children of the King. I'm thankful for Jesus who made us citizens of heaven. I'm thankful for Jesus who by his blood made it possible for us to be made the very righteousness of God, who transferred us from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God's beloved Son. You see, if everything in your and my life had been a disaster, if you had been born into poverty and stayed in poverty all of your life, if you'd never had any educational opportunities, if you'd been born in some part of the world where you were a slave all of your life, if you'd had poor health all of your life, or if at the end of your life you had ended up with cancer or multiple sclerosis or some other terrible disease, but in the very end you came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, who had purchased your redemption and offered you the opportunity to be born again into the kingdom of God, and in the very end you are able to know Him whom to know aright is eternal life. My friend, it would be the most amazing opportunity. And in the end you are able to go into heaven and to spend eternity with the holy God. All of those disasters in your life would mean nothing. But knowing Jesus would be everything. Because you see, in the end you and I can't take anything with us, none of my accomplishments, none of your achievements, none of the things that you have accumulated in your life because Jesus told us that our life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions. The only thing that matters in the end is not even our family, because in the end it's only my own self that stands before God when He says, Why should I let you into my heaven? And the only thing I'll be able to say is, Lord, I have no merit of my own, but I plead the blood. I plead the blood of Jesus. He has washed me as white as snow, and he has credited to my account the very righteousness of God. And you see, for that I am thankful. I am eternally grateful, and so should you be, dear friend, on this Thanksgiving weekend. I have so many things to be thankful for. I'm thankful that I have a wife that has loved me for forty four years and put up with all of my shenanigans. I'm thankful for children and grandchildren. I'm thankful for a house to live in, and that I have food to eat and clothes to wear, that I have relatively good health. I'm thankful that I'm an American citizen, and I'm thankful that I wake up every day, that I can hear and see and speak the praises of our good God. But above all things, my dear listeners, I'm thankful for Jesus, and I'm thankful for the blood of the cross, and I'm thankful for Holy Spirit who lives in me and every day works to conform me to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm thankful that one day when I breathe my last, that they may say that Robot's gone, that he's gone to the grave, but don't you believe it? Because on that day I'll be more alive than ever before, because when I breathe my last here I will open my eyes in glory, and I will breathe heaven's air, and I will be with the living God. And it's all because of Jesus. I'm thankful to know Jesus. I am thankful for the blood of the cross. I am thankful that He loved me and gave Himself for me. Blessed, blessed be the name of the Lord. You're listening to More Than Medicine, I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson, and on this Thanksgiving weekend, remember, Jesus loves you and your doctor loves you. We'll be back again next week, and until then, may the Lord bless you real good.

SPEAKER_00: 15:24

Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Ministry or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to their Facebook page, Instagram, or webpage at JacksonFamily Ministry.com. Also, don't forget to check out Dr. Jackson's books that are available on Amazon. It's turkey book, turkey tails, and five footprints. And it's five food.