Thanksgiving Girl
Since most of us spend a great deal of time focusing on food on Thanksgiving Day, I thought I’d skip presenting a recipe in this 2015 blog and concentrate on the reason for the season.
Everyone I ran into last Monday said “Happy Thanksgiving,” at some point in our encounter: my friend at the library, two Wendy’s employees where I picked up my usual—a junior cheeseburger with bacon—and several people at Penrose hospital where I was waiting for a chest x-ray.
After I arrived home, I began to think, “You know, you can turn that greeting around to speak a timeless truth. Thanksgiving makes us happy. I’m not talking about the holiday but the daily giving of thanks for God’s hidden blessings.
I’m not nearly as good at this daily thanksgiving as I aspire to be. But when I’m attentive to look for reasons to give thanks during an everyday day, little stabs of joy always appear upon the scene. Some examples are things like realizing that the prolific morning glories growing on my side deck near where I write are God’s special gift to me. He knows how much I love the color of blue. Other examples might be walking out of the church lobby into the fresh air of an unexpected Indian Summer Day, being blessed by the kindness in the eyes of a medical technician, having a good book to read that I can hardly put down.
In that book that is hard to put down (A Long Time Gone), the main character realizes toward the end of the story that “Like my mother before me, it had taken me a long time to realize it was time to grow up. To stop looking toward the vanishing point where horizon met sky, and instead look around where I stood, and finally see all that I’d been given” (Karen White, A Long Time Gone).
The trick is to develop eyes that can see.
Sarah Young in her devotional Jesus Calling says, “The earth still declares My Glory to those who have eyes that see and ears that hear.”
Today my husband Bob and I went to a gourmet restaurant for Thanksgiving Dinner (Our little family from Denver is coming tomorrow and I’ll stir up some lavender cookies). We decided that today we would make our time out one of continual thanksgiving. On the way home, we happened upon several potholes on different streets. Instead of complaining, I said “I’m thankful for the potholes.”
Then I laughed and admitted, “No, I’m not thankful for the potholes, but I’m thankful for all the streets that the city has repaved this year so there aren’t any potholes!!”
It was Bob’s turn to laugh. “Yes!” Even the sometime struggle to be thankful can bring gladness.
Earlier this morning Bob had read me his summary of the abundant things God had brought into our lives during the last couple of years. We were both amazed at the packed-in blessings: our first cruise, our 50th wedding anniversary, some miraculous healings, the publishing at last of our Inspiring Cuisine cookbook and extended time with our youngest son. I didn’t realize how much God had blessed us during those years.
I hope sharing these specific things from our lives will spark some memory of blessings in your life that you hadn’t thought of lately. For God is good to his own. For those who believe in Christ, He’s always sprinkling little treasures all along the way
“A life of praise and thanksgiving becomes a life filled with miracles” (Sarah Young, Jesus Calling).
—RuthAnn Ridley
Inspiring Cuisine 