Hello all,
Here's my first post on this blog. A new experience for me, but I anticipate that it will be a great experience for my and my better half, the CaB in MkCaB.
Upon reflection just days before Thanksgiving, I realize just how much we have to be thankful for. God has granted us both good health, a place to call home in a great neighborhood, good neighbors too, the ability to attend Seminary, provision for food, a loving family and most of all, the remission of our sins and our adoption into God's circle of saints.
What is the purpose of Thanksgiving, or what significance does it have today in our nation? Being originally observed by the first Puritan settlers (aka. the Pilgrims) in their second year here in the New World in response to God's preserving them through a hard and very deadly year.
Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national observance in the midst of a truly horrific and unpopular Civil War. Still, our nation in recognition of her Creator, saw it right to give thanks to God for what had been given to her by Him.
Although we are experiencing hardships, personally and as a nation, we still can look back and reflect on how good that we really have it. But sometimes we need to go through hard times to slap us in the face and wake us out of our self-sufficient and apathetic ruts and to then truly appreciate what God has given us.
May we take out cues from our national history and reflect on our personal history, and sincerely thank God for His goodness and His Grace to ones as undeserving as we are.
And if you are not thankful, do you realize that you are not the source of your own happiness? That you are not the sustainer and provider of all that is in your life?
Seek with all your heart the One Who Creates, Who provides and Who Forgives all our un-thankfulness.
-MkB
