[Faith-talk] A Thanksgiving Reflection for Thursday, November 28, 2013

[Paul]

Hello to all my friends in the U.S.  Well, perhaps by this time you are stuffed to the gills with all kinds of food and are either watching your favorite football team or, hopefully, reading this post.  At any rate I hope you had a good Thanksgiving Day celebration with friends and family.

Bernice Maddux is someone with whom I'm not that all familiar, but some years ago she wrote an article entitled "A Thanksgiving Meditation" which I'd like to present to you today.  It is rendered as follows:

Traditionally, we set aside a definite and special day of each year to pause and be thankful for all that we have received in the way of blessings in our lives.  The rest of the year, I'm afraid, many of us take these same blessings for granted, shoving them thoughtlessly into the November football-turkey-cranberry-sauce and pumpkin pie slot to dispose of them as a unit on Thanksgiving Day.

How we limit ourselves in the giving of thanks and the counting of blessings!

We know that enumeration of our gifts is as futile as counting the stars in the galaxy or the glistening sands along the seashore.  Our finite minds are incapable; our time too short.  But, even though completing the job is impossible, we should feel compelled to make a start.

Please accept this, our note of thanks, Dear God, for the liberality You have shown us, Your children.  We are grateful for the wonderful blessings of the past and present and the hopes we hold for the future.

Thank You for Your omnipotence and boundless love, which carries us through tragedies and reverses and stands us firmly on our feet again for the uncertain journey ahead.

There is consolation in the knowledge that, if there is a breakdown in communications, it is we who have pulled away, not You.  And, for the forgiveness included in this package deal, we humbly thank You.  We may err and err again; but, thanks to Your living, forgiving Spirit, when repentance is felt and properly expressed, there is yet hope for us.

If ever we are prone to question or doubt Your love, dear Father, please cause us to look back at the cross and start again from there, letting You guide our stubborn and stumbling feet into the path You have charted for us.

We thank You for America and for the peace and security we feel here.  Keep her always on her toes.  Keep those by whom she is peopled busy with the task of driving hate, tyranny, greed, and oppression from her door.

We thank You for families.  May they grow in unity and love and service to Thee.  Let the words _disintegration, _generation _gap, and _out-of-date become obsolete descriptives where the family is concerned.  We know that families are God-ordained.  Help us to believe with all our hearts that they can and will be God-sustained.

Thank You for our children, those fragile bundles of clay which we strive with uncertain hands to mold into honorable men and women to carry on Your work.  Thank You for the look of trust in our babies' eyes, for our teens who try our patience to the limit but reward us with love and appreciation when we least expect it, and four our married children, who can manage their homes perfectly without us but still ask our advice and still call our house "home."

We thank You for home, for the comfort and serenity and security it affords us, and for the spirit of love and helpfulness that abides there.

Though we are inexperienced at giving thanks for dark days, meager beginnings, failures, adversities, struggles, uncertainties, pain, sorrow and weaknesses, make us realize, Father, that even in these there are hidden blessings and unrecognizable balm for the soul in our dependence upon Thee.

Make us believe that dark days are just a prelude to brighter ones, a dreaded but quite necessary tunnel that will lead us into the sunshine again.

Help us to realize that from meager beginnings comes a greater and much fuller appreciation for any measure of success we might attain.

Show us how to use failures, struggles and uncertainties as necessary stepping-stones to achieving worthwhile and desired goals in life.

Make us thankful for pain and sorrow in that it brings an appreciation and thankfulness for the absence of it, and causes us to sympathize, search out and be helpful to others who are experiencing it.

Help us to look our weaknesses squarely in the face, and in the knowledge that overcoming them there is strength.

So what if we missed the brass ring? Show us that only through reaching that we can attain full stature, and that not until we have sailed tempestuous seas can we experience fully the joys of a placid one.

Teach us that failure presents a series of lessons to be learned and give us open minds to learn them.

Impress upon us that sin has its inception only in a fertile heart.  Help us to be uprooting in its infancy and planting in its stead good deeds and pure seeds of faith.

Keep us mindful to be thankful not only for the evident blessings of splendor and magnificence, but those blessings as well that we rarely recognize as such, those we must search for and often overlook.

Though we may never reach the end of the rainbow, make our hearts thankful that we are able to view it from any angle.

So many have given thanks for so little; let us never forget to give thanks for so much.

And there you have Sister Maddux's devotional meditation which I hope was a blessing to you.  It might be helpful if you go back and meditate on each paragraph before you either delete it, send it or save it.  I've had quite a few years to do that, and it has been a blessing each time.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Lord willing, tomorrow there will be another hopefully thoughtful contribution for your consideration.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul