Thanksgiving Reflections -- 2013
It is Thanksgiving Morning. I am blessed with family, friends, and a faith community I'm privileged to serve. I am a child of God, living in relationship with God in Christ through the Spirit.
Thanksgiving Day has always had a harvest theme -- one that goes back to the Hebrew Bible. Even though I've always lived in the city and gathered my food not from the land itself, but from the grocery store (there are some who question the validity of a harvest based holiday in an urban age, but I think that there is sufficient imagination that we can get the picture). I grew up with Psalm 100 as the central text of the day, for it is an invitation to join with the rest of creation in making a "joyful noise to the Lord"
1 Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Worship the Lord with gladness;
come into his presence with singing.
2 Worship the Lord with gladness;
come into his presence with singing.
3 Know that the Lord is God.
It is he that made us, and we are his;[a]
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
It is he that made us, and we are his;[a]
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him, bless his name.
and his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him, bless his name.
5 For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
On this day let us stop for a moment, even as we eat dinners and perhaps watch football games and parades to remember that the Lord is Good and that God's "steadfast love endures forever." It is this message of divine love that needs to carry the day. May we, together, join in celebrating God's blessings by being that blessing to the creation.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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