November 2007

Dear friends,
     Greetings to you in the name of our God, from whom all blessings flow!
     Later this month, we'll gather at the family table to offer thanks and to feast - turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie - yum!  And to tell the truth, I think we all have the feasting part pretty well under control.  (Just hand me a fork and I'm set).  But what about the thankfulness part?
     As I think about the first Thanksgiving - hundreds of years ago - I am humbled by the faith of the early settlers of this country.  You know the story.  They had been through a tough time.  Food was scarce, yet they celebrated.  Morale was low, yet they celebrated.  The cold days of late autumn brought ominous signs of an impending harsh winter, yet they celebrated.  Even though  they had every reason to be afraid and to give up hope, they offered thanks to God for getting them that far.
     You know, it's easy to offer thanks when the harvest is in and when the harvest has been bountiful.  It's really no chore at all to give thanks when life has gone smoothly and without complications.  It requires no extra energy to say thank you when you get what you think you deserve. 
     But for our forebears in this country, Thanksgiving was a spiritual discipline.  Their harvest was meager, but they still gave thanks for what they had.  Their lives were bad - how many of us would have survived back then? - but they still gave thanks for being alive.  And even though famine, drought, dissention, sickness, and war, they still were able to pause long enough to recognize that what little they had came from God.
     This Thanksgiving, pause to consider the abundance you have.  Yes, abundance.  Something tells me we have more food in each of our kitchens than the Pilgrims had in their entire village.  Abundance - homes, cars, clothing, furniture, bank accounts, hobby items, the list goes on.  Perhaps your abundance is even overflowing your attic, straining the rafters!  Consider the abundance - health, mobility, family, communication, medicine, opportunity.  Abundance!
     Soon the Christmas season will be upon us.  Advertisers will tell us about all the things we'll need to be happy in the new year.  If we used this Thanksgiving as an opportunity to be truly appreciative of the abundance we already have, Christmas 2007 will be unlike any other.  We'll sense that we don't really need the things we see on TV or in the stories.  We'll be thankful for what we already have.
     Don't worry about what you don't have.  God provides.  We've seen that in the heritage of this country - and our church.  It's up to us to be thankful for what we have - in our individual lives, and in our life together.
     Marcia and I are thankful that we can count you among your many blessings -

Pastor Jon West