Thanksgiving Devotion

Thanksgiving will be here in just a few weeks. My co-writer and I have written devotional books for pretty much every occurrence throughout the year since we have a "Glimpses of God" series that covers winter, spring, summer, and fall. In addition we have a holiday devotional titled,  Glimpses of the Savior that is currently on a blog tour and on sale for .99 (Kindle version). I thought I'd share a Thanksgiving devotion from that book:

You walk into a kitchen where Thanksgiving dinner is being prepared. Or perhaps you are the one preparing the meal and you walk back in after having stepped out for a minute. You are suddenly engulfed by the delicious aroma that fills the room. A turkey seasoned with sage and rosemary is baking in the oven. Bread bakes on the shelf of another part of the oven along with broccoli casserole with cheese melting in it, and hot pecan pie. Potatoes ready to mash and simmering gravy rest on top of the stove. On the countertop are a cranberry salad and a cold pumpkin pie with whipped cream next to it, waiting to be smoothed on top. You peer at the food through the oven window; the turkey is sizzling, the broccoli casserole is bubbling and the bread and pecan pie are browned to perfection.

Your mouth waters at the delightful smells, but still you are left only imagining how delicious these foods really are. As wonderful as these foods look, and as enticing as these smells are, you need to taste the food to truly appreciate it. These other sensations pale in comparison to what you experience when you sit down at the table for dinner and actually taste the food. Only then, when you put a piece of warm bread or a fork full of cheesy broccoli in your mouth, do you really know how good it is.

King David knew this. Well, he may not have known about our American Thanksgiving turkey dinners, and the foods that made his mouth water may have been things we have never eaten, but he knew that tasting was the best way to see how good something really was. So he tells us to taste and see that the Lord is good. We are not just to read of God’s goodness in a book, or hear about it from a friend or from our pastor in a sermon on a Sunday morning. No, David tells us to taste it, to experience it!

But it begs the question; how do we experience God and taste His goodness? A closer look at the rest of this Psalms 34 is helpful in explaining how we do this. The passage tells us to take refuge in the Lord (vs. 8), to fear the Lord (vs. 9), and to seek Him (vs. 10). It instructs us to listen and carefully note what the Psalmist and other writers of God’s word have to say (vs. 11). The passage also tells us to keep from speaking things that are evil or deceitful (vs. 13), to turn from evil, do good, and pursue peace (vs. 14). 

Look at the verbs the Psalmist uses in these verses. He says to take refuge, seek, listen, turn away from, pursue. Do you notice anything special about these verbs? They are action verbs. This then is how we taste God’s goodness. It is a call to action, not a passive observation. We are to actively engage in a walk with our Lord.

Prayer: Father, You are good. Teach me to actively pursue You. Help me to learn how to taste Your goodness. In Jesus’ name, Amen. 

Thought for the Day: Tasting that the Lord is good does not happen through passive observation, it requires action.

 

 

 

 

 

God's Gift

2 Corinthians 9:15 says, "Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift." I have never really noticed this verse. I mean it has never really

stood out to me before … until chapel at school last week … and now I will  never forget it.


I substitute at a Christian school and happened to be subbing on chapel day last week. The speaker was interesting. She drew a huge chalk picture as she spoke. I did not know her and sadly cannot remember her name. But I remember the verse she quoted.

She said this verse is the perfect verse for this time of year because it begins with thanksgiving and ends with a gift. What a powerful observation about this verse! It is a perspective that sealed this verse in my mind.

As I'm writing this it is the day before Thanksgiving. This year will be different for me. My Mom passed away last summer, and her absence is felt. Two of my sisters called me this week grieving again over her passing. I’m reminded of her as I prepare food to bring because so much of how I cook was learned from her.

We’ll have Thanksgiving at my adult daughter’s this year for the first time. I’m excited about passing the baton. She’ll have a house full with her, her son, fiancé, his two sons, two brothers, one of the brothers fiancé’s and my husband and me. I tried to tell her how I cook a turkey but she assured me she could find the instructions online. 😁

It’s a new chapter and I am determined to embrace it because truly, I have so much to be thankful for! Having had a loving mother who lived a long and wonderful life and a daughter who is carrying on traditions are just some of my many, many blessings. Most of all, I am thankful for God's unspeakable gift--His son, Jesus who came not to condemn the world but that the world through Him can be saved. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving has rolled around again. Time seems to fly these days and frankly, that's one of the many things I find myself thankful for. I have seen days that drag; seasons in life that seemed desperate and I wondered when things would get better again. I'll take happy, busy blessed days that fly by instead, every time.

This year, like most years, I find myself looking back at Thanksgivings of the past. So many memories flood my mind from my childhood Thanksgivings in Africa, to the years my young family would drive to my mother's for Thanksgiving to the years I have cooked a turkey at my house.

Often others join me and my family for Thanksgiving dinner. How I treasure the years my friend and now co-writer in many of my books, Shirley Crowder and her precious mother whom I called Aunt Jeannie, came to my house to join me, my parents, and another missionary family for Thanksgiving. They did this a couple years in a row and shortly after the last time they visited, Aunt Jeannie passed away. I no longer have her in my life but I have those sweet and funny memories of her.

This year, a Nigerian family who attends church with us will come to my house and share the meal with us. My family has grown close to this family in the two years we have known them. They are here to gain a seminary education at Southern Seminary. Their little boy, about four years old, always runs to me when he sees me exclaiming, "Grand Ma!" He wraps his arms around me and then asks, "When can I come to your house again?" Well, Evan, the answer to that right now, is next week at Thanksgiving. :)

Happy Thanksgiving ya'll!

God's Harvest

“Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home;
All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied;
Come to God’s own temple, come, raise the song of harvest home.”

This song, written by Henry Alford in 1844 has always been one of my favorite Thanksgiving songs. It is quite fitting for cold climates like the US but even as a child in Africa, I loved the song and could relate to it.

There, Thanksgiving comes in the dry season at the beginning of Harmattan, a very dry and dusty season when the winds over the Sahara Desert blow southward, blowing dust down on countries like Nigeria, where I lived. Even there we worked hard in the summer and early fall rainy seasons to gather the harvest for use in the long dry season when nothing grew.

The song makes me feel sentimental and puts me in the holiday mood. But actually, a closer look at the words reveal a serious message. The third verse says:

“For the Lord our God shall come, and shall take His harvest home;

From His field shall in that day all offenses purge away,
Giving angels charge at last in the fire the tares to cast;
But the fruitful ears to store in His garner evermore.”

God’s harvest will happen someday. Right now, we are still in the summer / rainy season of God’s harvest. We need to be faithfully working in His fields while we can. Mathew 9:37-38 says, “The harvest is plentiful but he laborers are few therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers.”

Through my Kitchen Window

Veterans Day and Thanksgiving

 

Today is Veteran’s Day. As I reflect on veterans who gave so much so that others, like me, can live in peace, I realize how much I have to be thankful for. 

Thanksgiving is just two weeks away and I will travel to my parents, who by God’s grace are still living, and celebrate Thanksgiving with them. The picture on today’s blog is of my father, a former Marine.

Veterans Day and Thanksgiving thoughts have me remembering a true story that I once heard.

My husband has a close friend from Germany. In high school he spent six months living with this German family as an exchange student and then their son spent a year living with my husband’s family. Shortly after we were married, my husband and I visited his German family. Sitting around one night, I heard his German Vati (father) tell this story.

This man served in the German army in WWII. He was just 19 and did not understand all that his country and its wicked leader were doing. He was drafted, so he served.

Towards the end of the war, in the middle of winter, he was captured by the Americans. Tired, hungry, and cold, he had not eaten in days, his coat was threadbare and his boots so worn, his sockless toes were exposed.

He saw a fellow soldier cross an open field so he tried it. But American soldiers quickly surrounded him pointing their guns at his head. He dropped to the ground. I don’t think he even had a weapon but if he did, it had no ammo. At any rate, he knelt in the snow, expecting to be shot in the head, where their guns were aimed. But he was not shot.

Instead the soldiers told him to come with them to a nearby POW camp. “Oh,” he thought, “they will torture me before they kill me.”

Upon arrival at the camp, hidden in a wooded area, my friend’s father fully expected to be tortured and dreaded the ordeal that was about to unfold.

“Sit down,” the Americans said, as they pointed to a log near a camp fire. He sat, fearing what would happen next.

At least the fire felt warm. It was the first warmth he had experienced in weeks.

As he waited, a US soldier brought him a bowl of hot stew and a spoon. Then shortly, they gave him new boots and a new coat.

As my friend’s father told us this story, his face lit up in a smile and mine teared up. My husband’s German father said, smiling, "They did not torture me. They gave me shelter, warm clothes and food. If I had known this is what it would be like to be captured by the Americans, I would have surrendered much earlier.” And he added, “I’m so thankful I was not captured by the Russians. They would have killed me, for sure.”

Today, I am reminded how proud I am to be an American and how thankful I am for this nation and all the men and women who sacrificed so much for her!

Thanksgiving

“The Pilgrims came across the sea,
And never thought of you and me; And yet it's very strange the way we think of them Thanksgiving day.”


I had practiced and practiced this poem by Annette Wynne. I was eight years old and remember it like it was yesterday. I and my classmates were to recite this poem in unison at the annual Thanksgiving dinner on the Ogbomoso compound. Mine was a large class–we had three girls and two boys. Yes, that was large as classes on this mission station went. My mother, always the seamstress, made us Pilgrim outfits to wear. I remember donning that gray straight dress, tying my white apron around my waist, placing the white bonnet over my hair and smoothing the large square white collar that I had slipped over my neck. The boys had tall cardboard hats painted black with gold construction paper buckles glued on and large square cardboard gold colored buckles on their waists too. They held cardboard guns in their hands.
 

I was excited! It was my first taste of acting. Our poem went off without a hitch. So I suppose the acting debut for my friends and me went well. But what I remember most about that evening is the magical dinner under the African stars. Large tables had been set up on one of the expansive lawns, still green from the recent season of rains. And there was more food than I could have ever imagined! To a child of eight, it was a grand adventure. There were tables and tables of tasteful delights! I ate till I could not eat any more, stuffing myself with deviled eggs, olives, potato salad, chicken, green beans, fresh tropical fruits, and deserts by the dozens. I really cannot remember if we had turkey–it was Africa in the 1960’s after all. But we certainly had food! The night was warm, the fellowship sweet, and the food of course, was delicious! And I learned something about myself that night. I am better at eating than acting.