Have a Wonderful Thanksgiving

 I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new.  

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thank you, friends,  near and far,  for your active participation in our lives and ministry.  Thank you for kind words, encouraging thoughts, considerate acts of kindness, and tireless prayer on our behalf.

Some of you I’ve known for decades, some only since initiating Vibrance a couple months ago. I’m thankful for the way you draw my attention Godward; hopefully I do the same for you.

Jared should pull into the drive late tonight,  I pray for his safety, and that a little gray Celica with lots’n’lots of miles (like 200,000) runs flawlessly tonight.   Tomorrow night after work (Wednesday) Brenda, PJ, Sophie and I head for Pulaski, (ever hear of Pulaski Polka Days?  Maybe not.  It’s a small town),  and the kids will follow in my car once Bethany finishes at work.  

We’ll wake up in the country Thanksgiving Morning, enjoying how time stands still and waits a couple days before the sprint to Christmas begins.  I like that the phone’s never for me.  I like that the girls don’t expect us guys to trudge along behind while they go hunting Friday, Christmas money their ammunition.   I like that life slows enough to let a guy savor the scent of fall in the air and smile at the crispness of early morning frost.  It’s more than a little apparent — we live in a land of plenty.  I like that standing at the top of the hill I have to remember what the cottonwoods by the river sounded like last summer, cuz the leaves are gone but for a few hangers-on.  I like that God and I have time for liesurely Father/son conversations early in the morning over coffee and orange juice.  I like seeing the smiles and sleepy greetings of now-adult children when they emerge, kids who now live away from home.   I like listening to tales I’ve heard a couple times already, but fit the situation again.  I like knowing the folks are happiest when we make ourselves completly at home and I’ve got that down pretty good by now.  🙂 

My heart is overflowing with gratitude again this Thanksgiving.  

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.  He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.   (James 1.17-18)

Father God,   my prayer is simple, rising from the center of who I am in You:  Thank You.

–PLR—