This week we celebrate Thanksgiving with warm meals made with love as the heart of family and friends reconnect around the dining table. It is a memorial of America’s early immigrant settlers’ first successful harvest in a new land—a feast shared with the Wampanoags who aided them in planting crops. It is a time of remembering how the pilgrims had survived harsh beginnings in an unfamiliar place, yet with the help of strangers.
Every one of us has faced challenges and difficulties in life. Some we have overcome with fairly easily solutions, while other trials have overwhelmed us with grief or even left us emotionally wounded. Nevertheless, one thing remains sure—we are not alone and we are not without hope. We have God who watches over us night and day and who sends us people to help us on our way.
This is what makes Thanksgiving so special — a feast that is honored from generation to generation as we celebrate the truth that we not only need one another, but that we have one another, and we are grateful for one another. We are grateful that God has given us Himself, our family and friends—grateful that we are loved and that we can love others because God fills us with His radiant love.
The ability to be grateful is a gift from God. Gratitude is a radiant force that harnesses our often-troubled thoughts with positive energy. It redirects our focus, lifting our vision to see fresh possibilities greater than our obstacles and challenges. Gratitude empowers us to see our past, present, and future in new ways—with hope and faith. Gratitude is the guardian of joyful perspectives when circumstances tell us otherwise. It inspires our heart with the sweet remembrance that we are loved and valued by One who works all things for good, One who can work miracles and wonders right in the middle of our impossibilities…one who surrounds us with the love and encouragement of friends and family.
Let this Thanksgiving be a time of remembering how much God loves you and is able to do above and beyond what you could ask or think in whatever area of challenge you may be facing. Let it be a time of remembering good things as you gather with family and friends.
May you be blessed from above in this special time of year.
In everything give thanks for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thess.5:18
