Thanksgiving Day U.S.A.
Thanksgiving Day
My dear encountered couples:
Happy Thanksgiving! Very special day. One of the best of the year. Some people like Thanksgiving more than Christmas. Don’t have to buy any gifts. It’s the day we take a look at the gifts we already have and be grateful for them. That’s why we are here.
We gather with our families to take time out to remember and count our blessings, and thank God for them, and for those people who have brought goodness into our lives. All too often we think of what we don’t have, what we’d like to have, how much more other people have. But not today. We open our eyes today and see how we’ve been blessed. Sure there is much we don’t have. But we have even less when we don’t see and appreciate what is already in our hands.
It is possible to be rich, to have our homes filled with an abundance of treasures, and still think we are deprived. Ever go to your closet or open a drawer and find something you didn’t even know you had? A shirt, a dress, a pair of pants, a fancy scarf? “Where did I get this?” you wonder. Aunt Helen gave it to you, don’t you remember? For Christmas, three years ago. Or you bought it yourself last year when you were feeling low and went shopping to lift your spirits. And you put it away and forgot about it. How often do we do that?
Today is the day when we are to look around us, open the doors and closets of our lives, so to speak, and see what wonderful things we have. Not only what wonderful things, but what wonderful people, all those we take for granted and don’t realize how much they mean to our happiness, until they’re gone.
When St. Paul wrote the Corinthians, he began his letter by speaking of their good fortune. Suppose they forgot how lucky they were and needed to be reminded? Suppose they were already taking their faith for granted? “I continually thank my God for you,” he wrote them, “because of the favor he has bestowed on you in Christ Jesus, in whom you have been richly endowed with every gift of speech and knowledge...you lack no spiritual gift as you wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Isn’t that the way it often is? Someone else notices our good fortune whether we do or not. Had the Corinthians become so accustomed to being Christian that it didn’t mean as much to them anymore? Maybe they had forgotten how spiritually impoverished and ignorant of divine things they once were. Maybe they needed to be reminded how lucky they were while most people were still outside the family of God. Christians were few in number in those days. They still are. There are billions of people still outside Christianity. Maybe Christians today need Paul to remind them of their good fortune. Only one in ten lepers came back to thank Jesus for their cure. Is it possible only one in ten Christians thank God for their gift of faith?
If so, you are one of those one out of ten. You appreciate your faith, your religion, your God. You are grateful to Jesus Christ for all he does for you. And to all others for what they do for you. You need no one to offer thanks on your behalf. You are doing it on your own. That’s wonderful. May you always be that way. Happy Thanksgiving Day! Let us all be grateful every day.
