Happy Thanksgiving Pali Pres!
I pray this blog reaches each of you enjoying a day off with your family and friends, indulging in some leftover turkey and pumpkin pie (or whatever your Thanksgiving delicacies of choice were this year), and feeling thankful for your many blessings. A special blessing for our family this year is that Luke’s birthday fell on Thanksgiving Day! Our little baby is now 5. Where has time gone?!
In pondering what to focus on in this week’s blog, I did some searching for the perfect Thanksgiving quotation or prayer to share with you. Within three minutes of looking, I quickly ran into a problem—there are WAY too many wonderful reflections on the theme of gratitude to pick only one. Therefore, I decided to share with you a few of my favorites in the hopes that they will each speak to you and help make this Thanksgiving weekend even more special.
The first comes from the book of James, and is a simple but important reminder of God’s goodness to us:
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.”
The following is a line from George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789:
"Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these 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."
I really like the way author Jonathan Safran Foer describes the comprehensive nature of Thanksgiving:
“Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine’s Day, are in one way or another about being thankful.”
I also really love this quotation from the late US Ambassador and Presbyterian pastor Henry Van Dyke:
“Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse.”
And last but not least, Marcie’s famous line from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving:
“We should just be thankful for being together. I think that’s what they mean by Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown."
With gratitude for all of you,
Pastor Matt