HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Thursday of the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time - Thanksgiving Day (USA)
My dear encountered couples:
Happy Thanksgiving Day! We all have many things to be thankful for, don’t we? One of them is that we are able to gather together as a family or with friends and neighbors and do some of our thanking together. GOD IS GOOD!
I imagine, though, we all also have things that have come into our lives over the past year that we do not feel particularly thankful for. But for which we maybe should be. Maybe the intrusions into our lives, the interferences to our plans, the obstacles to our happiness that have come to us uninvited we should also give thanks for.
Is it not maybe the unpleasant, the bothersome, the hurtful, even the tragic that can help build a strong character in us? None of us enjoys suffering, nobody I know gets pleasure going through fire or floods or sickness or pain or failure, but those things can certainly be opportunities for us to learn to stand tall and be strong.
Our faith in God can become strengthened or weakened by adversity. Our characters can be improved or lessened by all that happens in our lives. What has come into our lives since last Thanksgiving - the unenjoyable as well as the enjoyable, the bad as well as the good - can all be considered blessings. They can all be looked upon as gifts and opportunities for our growth and perfection, not only as human beings, but as children and saints of God.
All that God allows us to experience is meant for our benefit. It is to form us into the likeness of his Son in a way that Jesus was formed. He became the man capable of dying without losing his dignity, of rising without losing his humility. Jesus learned and grew by all that happened to him during his life. That is what our lives are supposed to bring about.
It is how we respond to everything in our lives, it is the attitude we carry around with us towards all the people and things that come into our lives that decides what we become, not only in our later years here on earth, but forever in eternity. By the means he knows is best God is giving us all the opportunities we need to form in us the character that will be us forever. What a wonderful God we have who, moment by moment, brings and permits into our lives just what it is we need most!
Yes, God is good. Let us be grateful for having a God who is so concerned about our present and future welfare. Would that we could always be that way about each other. Oh, that every day could be like Thanksgiving Day when no one pushes away from the table hungry! Would you like to try to make every day be a Thanksgiving Day for somebody? Then do at least one thing a day that will make somebody thankful.
May you have a very Happy Thanksgiving!
