A Prayer of Thanks
God, You are good, and Your steadfast love endures forever! Even in the hardest seasons, I always have a reason to worship You.
Thank You for giving me victory and abundant life in Jesus
Christ! Although I don’t deserve it, You shower me with unconditional love and
forgiveness.
And so no matter what the future may hold, I will shout for
joy because You are with me. You comfort me and bless me in the presence of my
enemies. Nothing compares to You and no weapon can stand against You. In all
things, I am more than a conqueror through You!
Be glorified through me, God. Let the words of my mouth and
the meditations of my heart bless Your name.
I want my life to bring You praise.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
****
Fr. Rodney Kissinger, S.J.
********
Back during the dark days of 1929, a group of ministers in the Northeast, all graduates of the Boston School of Theology, gathered to discuss how they should conduct their Thanksgiving Sunday services. Things were about as bad as they could get, with no sign of relief. The bread lines were depressingly long, the stock market had plummeted, and the term Great Depression seemed an apt description for the mood of the country. The ministers thought they should only lightly touch upon the subject Thanksgiving in deference to the human misery all about them. After all, there was to be thankful for. But it was Dr. William L. Stiger, pastor of a large congregation in the city that rallied the group. This was not the time, he suggested, to give mere passing mention to Thanksgiving, just the opposite.
3. We must learn to be thankful or we will grow arrogant and self-satisfied.
One said he would see Jesus later.
One decided that he had never had leprosy.
One said he would have gotten well anyway.
One gave the glory to the priests.
One said, "O, well, Jesus didn't really do anything."
One said, "Any rabbi could have done it."
One said, "I was already much improved."
Charles L. Brown, Content The Newsletter, June, 1990, p. 3.
John answered, "I can't. I've never
made a public prayer in my life."
"But you must!" implored his companion. "The bull is catching up to us."
"All right," panted John, "I'll say the only prayer I know, the one my father used to repeat at the table: 'O Lord, for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful.'"
Linus says, "Well, for one thing, you
have a little brother who loves you."
“Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where
are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to
God?” (Luke 17: 17-18) Ingratitude has been called “the most unkindest cut of
all.” Yes, it is so easy to fall in love with the gift and forget all about the
Giver; to admire a painting and never think of the painter; to enjoy music and
never know the heart from which it came; to accept and love ourselves and not
to care for the One from whom we came.
We like to think of ourselves as doers and
achievers but the basic fact of life is that we are primarily receivers and
transmitters not achievers. We all started out as zero, zip, nada. We did not
ask to be. We did nothing to get here. My very existence is a gift of God. What
am I anyway but a conglomeration of the gifts of God? What do I have that I
have not received? Our most basic relationship with God therefore should be one
of gratitude.
On another level I really did not start out
as zero, zip, nada. In fact, I did not start out at all. I existed for all
eternity. I existed in the mind of God as one of an infinite number of possible
beings, beings that possibly could be. Out of this infinite number of possible
beings God freely chose to create me.
My parents did not want me. They may have
wanted a child but they did not know who I would be. But God knew exactly who I
would be, and he wanted me. “You have not chosen me, I have chosen you.” So
from all eternity my most basic relationship with God is one of gratitude.
“Lord, give me a grateful heart.”
To remember and give thanks. God gave us a
memory so that we can remember and give thanks. The memory enables us to bring
forth from the storeroom of the past the wonderful moments of success, love and
happiness, so that we can re-live, re-enjoy them and be grateful. “Lord, give
me a grateful heart.”
To remember and give thanks. That is what
the Bible is all about. The Bible is the written history of many of the
wonderful gifts God has given us from the very creation of the world and the
promise of even greater gifts in the future. In the beginning the memory of
these gifts was handed on orally to each succeeding generation and then under
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit written down so that all could remember and
give thanks. “Lord, give me a grateful heart.”
To remember and give thanks. That is what
the Mass is all about. The Mass is the perfect act of thanksgiving that Jesus
commanded us to, “Do this in memory of me.” It is the perfect sacrifice Malachi
foretold which would be offered up from the rising of the sun to the going down
thereof. “Lord, give me a grateful heart.”
To remember and give thanks. That is why we
have a National Thanksgiving Day. We live in a country of plenty in a world of
want, a land of religious and political freedom in a world of ethnic cleansing
and zero tolerance, a land at peace in a
world at war. Yet we have to set aside one day a year to remind us to give
thanks to God. “Lord, give me a grateful heart.”
To remember and give thanks. And in so
doing we grow in the love of God. It is in gratitude for the gifts that we grow
in the love of the Giver. As we say in the preface at Mass, “Our act of
thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness but makes us grow in grace through
Jesus Christ, or Lord.”
Gifts are the language of love, the more
one loves the more one gives. Never has this language of gift-giving been
spoken to me as God has spoken it to me. If God would not give me one gift more
I should be grateful. But the best gift is yet to come. God will continue to
look over me with His Divine Providence and then at the end of my life he will
give me the greatest gift of all the gift of the Giver to be known, loved and
possessed forever.
“Lord, give me a grateful heart,” so that I
may always remember and give thanks, and in so doing I may grow in the love of
You.
********
Fr. Roman Vanasse, O. Praem.
On
Sunday morning, most of us go to something called "Mass" - but the
real word for it is "Eucharist". That word means "thanks"
in Greek and is still used today in modern Greece. I still remember the first
time I went to Greece and stopped at a "taverna" or sidewalk café in
Athens for some coffee. It was a warm, sunny day and I enjoyed watching the
people walk by. When I was ready to leave, I asked the waiter for my check.
When he brought it, I paid for my coffee and then added a small tip. He said "efkaristo".
I immediately recognized the word as a variation of "Eucharist".
"Thank you" - these words express
one of the most important sentiments that we owe to one another. Gratitude is a
virtue that is practiced too rarely. We tend to take so many things for
granted: our parents, the country in
which we live, the planet earth, the stars in the sky, the flowers in the
field, sunset and sunrise. If we truly realized how blessed we are, our hearts
would be filled with such gratitude that we would be saying "thank
you" every time we breathe. All it takes is a little foreign travel to
realize how much we have been blessed, and these blessings have come to us
freely. So, it is fitting that we take some special time occasionally to focus
on some of the things for which we should be especially thankful.
In many of his letters, St. Paul thanks God
for the graces we have all received. Another word for "graces" is the
expression of love which God has bestowed on us, without our merit or any real
effort on our part.
The first among these is the gift of our
faith. We believe in Jesus. We believe in life everlasting. Because of our
faith, we see the whole world and everything in it from a different perspective
than those who do not believe. They see nothing but what they can touch, taste,
see and feel. For them, the world is limited to material things. But through
the eyes of faith, we see beyond the world of our senses to the wonderful world
of the spirit and the great grace of our redemption in Jesus Christ. The real
beauty of the world lies beyond what we can see with our senses.
Thanksgiving is a special day when we say
thanks for all the good things which have come to us throughout our lives. Let
us be thankful for being born in a time and place where so much is given to us,
but most of all let us give thanks for the great love which is ours in Jesus
Christ. The best way to give thanks is by sharing that love with one another.
The next time we join with Jesus in that
great sacrifice, as we receive communion and share in His Eucharist, let us say
"thank you" to God for all the many blessings which are ours, even
without asking. Amen.
********
Back during the dark days of 1929, a group of ministers in the Northeast, all graduates of the Boston School of Theology, gathered to discuss how they should conduct their Thanksgiving Sunday services. Things were about as bad as they could get, with no sign of relief. The bread lines were depressingly long, the stock market had plummeted, and the term Great Depression seemed an apt description for the mood of the country. The ministers thought they should only lightly touch upon the subject Thanksgiving in deference to the human misery all about them. After all, there was to be thankful for. But it was Dr. William L. Stiger, pastor of a large congregation in the city that rallied the group. This was not the time, he suggested, to give mere passing mention to Thanksgiving, just the opposite.
This was the time for the nation to get
matters in perspective and thank God for blessings always present, but perhaps
suppressed due to intense hardship.
I suggest to you the ministers struck upon
something. The most intense moments of thankfulness are not found in times of
plenty, but when difficulties abound. Think of the Pilgrims that first
Thanksgiving. Half their number dead, men without a country, but still there
was thanksgiving to God. Their gratitude was not for something but in
something. It was that same sense of gratitude that lead Abraham Lincoln to
formally establish the first Thanksgiving Day in the midst of national civil
war, when the butcher's list of casualties seemed to have no end and the very
nation struggled for survival.
Perhaps in your own life, right now,
intense hardship. You are experiencing your own personal Great Depression. Why
should you be thankful this day? May I suggest three things?
1. We must learn to be thankful or we
become bitter.
2.
We must learn to be thankful or we will become discouraged.3. We must learn to be thankful or we will grow arrogant and self-satisfied.
Thankfulness seems to be a lost art today.
Warren Wiersby illustrated this problem in his commentary on Colossians. He
told about a ministerial student in Evanston, Illinois, who was part of a
life-saving squad. In 1860, a ship went aground on the shore of Lake Michigan
near Evanston, and Edward Spencer waded again and again into the frigid waters
to rescue 17 passengers. In the process, his health was permanently damaged.
Some years later at his funeral, it was noted that not one of the people he
rescued ever thanked him.
Our Daily Bread, February 20, 1994.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
An estimated 1.5 million people are living
today after bouts with breast cancer. Every time I forget to feel grateful to
be among them, I hear the voice of an eight-year-old named Christina, who had
cancer of the nervous system. When asked what she wanted for her birthday, she
thought long and hard and finally said, "I don't know. I have two sticker
books and a Cabbage Patch doll. I have everything!" The kid is right.
Erma Bombeck, Redbook, October,1992.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why did only one cleansed leper return to
thank Jesus? The following are nine
suggested reasons why the nine did not return:
One waited to see if the cure was real.
One waited to see if it would last.One said he would see Jesus later.
One decided that he had never had leprosy.
One said he would have gotten well anyway.
One gave the glory to the priests.
One said, "O, well, Jesus didn't really do anything."
One said, "Any rabbi could have done it."
One said, "I was already much improved."
Charles L. Brown, Content The Newsletter, June, 1990, p. 3.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forgive Me When I Whine
Today upon a bus, I saw a lovely maid with
golden hair; I envied her -- she seemed so gay, and how, I wished I were so
fair; When suddenly she rose to leave, I saw her hobble down the aisle; she had
one foot and wore a crutch, but as she passed, a smile. Oh God, forgive me when
I whine, I have two feet -- the world is mine.
And when I stopped to buy some sweets, the
lad who served me had such charm; he seemed to radiate good cheer, his manner
was so kind and warm; I said, "It's nice to deal with you, such courtesy I
seldom find"; he turned and said, "Oh, thank you sir." And then
I saw that he was blind. Oh, God, forgive me when I whine, I have two eyes, the
world is mine.
Then, when walking down the street, I saw a
child with eyes of blue; he stood and watched the others play, it seemed he
knew not what to do; I stopped a moment, then I said, "Why don't you join
the others, dear?" He looked ahead without a word, and then I knew he
could not hear. Oh God, forgive me when I whine, I have two ears, the world is
mine.
With feet to take me where I'd go; with
eyes to see the sunsets glow, with ears to hear what I would know. I am blessed
indeed. The world is mine; oh, God, forgive me when I whine.
Source Unknown.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
In his autobiography, Breaking Barriers,
syndicated columnist Carl Rowan tells about a teacher who greatly influenced
his life. Rowan relates: Miss Thompson reached into her desk drawer and pulled
out a piece of paper containing a quote attributed to Chicago architect Daniel
Burnham. I listened intently as she read: "Make no little plans; they have
no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make
big plans, aim high in hope and work. Remember that our sons and grandsons are
going to do things that would stagger us."
More than 30 years later, I gave a speech
in which I said that Frances Thompson had given me a desperately needed belief
in myself. A newspaper printed the story, and someone mailed the clipping to my
beloved teacher. She wrote me: "You have no idea what that newspaper story
meant to me. For years, I endured my brother's arguments that I had wasted my
life. That I should have married and had a family. When I read that you gave me
credit for helping to launch a marvelous career, I put the clipping in front of
my brother. After he'd read it, I said, 'You see, I didn't really waste my
life, did I?'"
Carl Rowan, Breaking Barriers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
In his book FOLK PSALMS OF FAITH, Ray
Stedman tells of an experience H.A. Ironside had in a crowded restaurant. Just
as Ironside was about to begin his meal, a man approached and asked if he could
join him. Ironside invited his to have a seat. Then, as was his custom,
Ironside bowed his head in prayer. When he opened his eyes, the other man
asked, "Do you have a headache?" Ironside replied, "No, I
don't." The other man asked, "Well, is there something wrong with
your food?" Ironside replied, "No, I was simply thanking God as I
always do before I eat."
The man said, "Oh, you're one of
those, are you? Well, I want you to know I never give thanks. I earn my money
by the sweat of my brow and I don't have to give thanks to anybody when I eat.
I just start right in!"
Ironside said, "Yes, you're just like my
dog. That's what he does too!"
Ray Stedman, Folk Psalms of Faith.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is gratitude that prompted an old man to
visit an old broken pier on the eastern seacoast of Florida. Every Friday
night, until his death in 1973, he would return, walking slowly and slightly
stooped with a large bucket of shrimp. The sea gulls would flock to this old
man, and he would feed them from his bucket. Many years before, in October,
1942, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an
important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea. But there was an
unexpected detour which would hurl Captain Eddie into the most harrowing
adventure of his life.
Somewhere over the South Pacific the Flying
Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, so
the men ditched their plane in the ocean...For nearly a month Captain Eddie and
his companions would fight the water, and the weather, and the scorching sun.
They spent many sleepless nights recoiling as giant sharks rammed their rafts.
The largest raft was nine by five. The biggest shark...ten feet long.
But of all their enemies at sea, one proved
most formidable: starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or
destroyed by the salt water. It would take a miracle to sustain them. And a
miracle occurred. In Captain Eddie's own words, "Cherry," that was
the B- 17 pilot, Captain William Cherry, "read the service that afternoon,
and we finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise. There was
some talk, but it tapered off in the oppressive heat. With my hat pulled down
over my eyes to keep out some of the glare, I dozed off."
Now this is still Captian Rickenbacker
talking..."Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a sea gull. I
don't know how I knew, I just knew. Everyone else knew too. No one said a word,
but peering out from under my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the
expression on their faces. They were staring at that gull. The gull meant
food...if I could catch it."
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Captain Eddie caught the gull. Its flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used
for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed
because a lone sea gull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land,
offered itself as a sacrifice. You know that Captain Eddie made it.
And now you also know...that he never
forgot. Because every Friday evening, about sunset...on a lonely stretch along
the eastern Florida seacoast...you could see an old man walking...white-haired,
bushy-eyebrowed, slightly bent. His bucket filled with shrimp was to feed the
gulls...to remember that one which, on a day long past, gave itself without a
struggle...like manna in the wilderness.
Paul Aurandt, "The Old Man and the
Gulls", Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story, 1977, quoted in Heaven Bound
Living, Knofel Stanton, Standard, 1989, p. 79-80.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first American Thanksgiving didn't
occur in 1621 when a group of Pilgrims shared a feast with a group of friendly
Indians. The first recorded thanksgiving took place in Virginia more than 11
years earlier, and it wasn't a feast. The winter of 1610 at Jamestown had
reduced a group of 409 settlers to 60. The survivors prayed for help, without
knowing when or how it might come. When help arrived, in the form of a ship
filled with food and supplies from England, a prayer meeting was held to give
thanks to God.
Today in the Word, July, 1990, p. 22.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A 12 year old boy named David was born
without an immune system. He underwent a bone marrow transplant in order to
correct the deficiency. Up to that point he had spent his entire life in a
plastic bubble in order to prevent exposure to common germs, bacteria, and
viruses that could kill him. He lived without ever knowing human contact. When
asked what he'd like to do if and when released from his protective bubble, he
replied, "I want to walk barefoot on grass, and touch my mother's
hand."
Source Unknown.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To All Ye Pilgrims: Inasmuch as the great
Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, beans,
squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game
and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He has protected us from the
ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted
us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience; now,
I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and
little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9
and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November ye 29th of the year of our Lord
one thousand six hundred and twenty-three, and third year since ye Pilgrims
landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor, and render
thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.
William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth
Colony.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------In
a sermon at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, Gary Wilburn said:
"In 1636, amid the darkness of the Thirty Years' War, a German pastor,
Martin Rinkart, is said to have buried five thousand of his parishioners in one
year, and average of fifteen a day. His parish was ravaged by war, death, and
economic disaster. In the heart of that darkness, with the cries of fear
outside his window, he sat down and wrote this table grace for his children:
'Now thank we all our God / With heart and hands and voices;/ Who wondrous
things had done,/ In whom His world rejoices. /Who, from our mother's
arms,/Hath led us on our way/ With countless gifts of love/ And still is ours today.'"Here
was a man who knew thanksgiving comes from love of God, not from outward
circumstances.
Don Maddox.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
First National Thanksgiving Proclamation
Whereas, it is the duty of all nations to
acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful
for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; Whereas, both
the houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to
recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and
prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and
signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity
peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and
happiness!"
Now therefore, I do recommend next, to be
devoted by the people of the states to the service of that great and glorious
being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that
will be, that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and
humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country.
George Washington, 1779.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamations which
are said to be by Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln's
Thanksgiving Proclamation
of
1863
The year that is drawing towards its close,
has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To
these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the
source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so
extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the
heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of
Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequalled
magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite
and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations,
order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony
has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that
theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the
Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and of
strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not
arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders
of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious
metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.
Population has steadily increased,
notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the
battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented
strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large
increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any
mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the
Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath
nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that
they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one
heart and voice by the whole American People.
I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in
every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who
are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of
November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who
dwelleth in the Heavens.
And I recommend to them that while offering
up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and
blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness
and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows,
orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are
unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty
Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be
consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony,
tranquillity and Union.
A. Lincoln, October 3, 1863.
Abraham Lincoln's
Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863
It is the duty of nations as well as of men
to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins
and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine
repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced
in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are
blessed whose God is the Lord.
We know that by His divine law, nations,
like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world.
May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates
the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to
the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?
We have been the recipients of the choisest
bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and
prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has
ever grown.
But we have forgotten God. We have
forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and
enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness
of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom
and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too
self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too
proud to pray to the God that made us.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that God
should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart
and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow
citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and
those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last
Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent
Father Who dwelleth in the heavens.
A. Lincoln, October 3, 1863.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scottish minister Alexander Whyte was known
for his uplifting prayers in the pulpit. He always found something for which to
be grateful. One Sunday morning the weather was so gloomy that one church
member thought to himself, "Certainly the preacher won't think of anything
for which to thank the Lord on a wretched day like this." Much to his
surprise, however, Whyte began by praying, "We thank Thee, O God, that it
is not always like this."
Daily Bread, August 26, 1989.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Budapest, a man goes to the rabbi and
complains, "Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room.
What can I do?"
The rabbi answers, "Take your goat into
the room with you." The man in
incredulous, but the rabbi insists. "Do as I say and come back in a
week."
A week later the man comes back looking
more distraught than before. "We
cannot stand it," he tells the rabbi. "The goat is filthy."
The rabbi then tells him, "Go home and
let the goat out. And come back in a week."
A radiant man returns to the rabbi a week
later, exclaiming, "Life is beautiful. We enjoy every minute of it now
that there's no goat -- only the nine of us."
George Mikes, How to be Decadent, Andre
Deutsch, London.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two men were walking through a field one
day when they spotted an enraged bull. Instantly they darted toward the nearest
fence. The storming bull followed in hot
pursuit, and it was soon apparent they wouldn't make it.
Terrified, the one shouted to the other,
"Put up a prayer, John. We're in for it!"
"But you must!" implored his companion. "The bull is catching up to us."
"All right," panted John, "I'll say the only prayer I know, the one my father used to repeat at the table: 'O Lord, for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful.'"
Source Unknown
****************
One of my favorite Peanuts comic strips is
the one that came out some years ago just a few days before Thanksgiving.
Lucy's feeling sorry for herself and she laments, "My life is a drag. I'm
completely fed up. I've never felt so low in my life."
Her little brother Linus tries to console
her and he says, "Lucy, when you're in a mood like this, you should try to
think of things you have to be thankful for; in other words, count your
blessings."
To that, Lucy says, "Ha! That's a good
one! I could count my blessings on one finger! I've never had anything and I
never will have anything. I don't get half the breaks that other people do.
Nothing ever goes right for me! And you talk about counting blessings! You talk
about being thankful! What do I have to be thankful for?"
With that, Lucy runs and hugs her little
brother Linus as she cries tears of joy. And while she's hugging him tightly,
Linus says, "Every now and then, I say the right thing
Welcome to this celebration of
Thanksgiving. This is a day we count our blessings. For many of us, our focus
will be on our material blessings. Our warm house. The comfortable car. The
stylish clothes. A table bountifully spread. And yet, in the long run of
things, these are the least important of all our blessings.
Our lesson for the day from John's Gospel
takes place just after Jesus has taken five small barley loaves and two small
fish and had fed about five thousand men and an unknown number of women and
children. Amazing is too small an adjective for such an extraordinary feat. Now
the crowd is seeking him out in earnest.
Jesus isn't impressed with their sudden
interest. "I tell you the truth," he says, you are looking for me . .
. because you ate the loaves and had your fill." Then he gives a word of
warning, "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to
eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has
placed his seal of approval."
What Jesus is saying is beware of focusing
on the physical, the material blessings in your life. These blessings are
generally trivial and transitory. It is a cliché, of course, to say that money
can't buy happiness. But the proof is bountiful. There are many, many people
who are blessed materially who are miserable...
