2025 November news-letter article

Hello friends!

Just within the past week, my aunt gave me a box of Christmas Tree Cakes.  Several of you know that these are my absolute favorite Little Debbie product.  I have multiple t-shirts celebrating the cakes; I have been known in years past to stock up, freezing them, and eating them all year long; some might argue that it is my favorite aspect of the advent/Christmastide season.  Mind you, we still have several days before October ends.  I have been blown away how many houses have entire front yards full of decor, weeks ahead of time, as folks prepare for Halloweds’ Eve.  Before we fill those same yards with inflatable reindeer and candy canes, going full Clark Griswold-style adornment, let me encourage us to slow our rolls, allowing a moment for us to reflect in gratitude as Thanksgiving Day approaches.

The fourth Thursday of November is a federal “holi day” here in the United States, but I’d like to argue that it should indeed be a “holy day” for us as followers of Jesus.  Better yet, let’s scrap the idea of limiting it to a day, and let’s be thankful 365 days per year.  What makes our thankfulness holy, it not THAT we have things for which to be thankful.  What makes gratitude holy, is TO WHOM we express our thanks.  Every human being, if they truly stop long enough to count their blessings, has things for which to be thankful, but we, as disciples of Jesus, know Who deserves our thanks.

The night before I type this, my father and I were talking about his uncles and aunts, the ones who adopted 20-year-old him when he moved to North Carolina in the spring of 1978.  We talked about how I, as a kid, knew them better than his own parents, who retired to Florida after military service.  I told Dad “I was pretty blessed to have several extra grandparent-figures as a kid, but I didn’t appreciate it at the time.”  He responded something to the effect of ‘yeah, we’re all pretty good at taking things for granted; you don’t really appreciate what you have until you don’t have it anymore.’  In a world where we make lists, sprinting from one task to the next, I think it is a good and godly thing to slow down, looking around, and taking inventory of what we “see”.  Perhaps then, we will be better able to count our blessings, or at least attempt to begin to count them.

In the weeks ahead, I will be preaching a sermon series on stewardship.  I have sensed God leading me to do so for nearly a year now, and I must confess to you, I am nervous about it.  I want to honor the Lord, and I’d really like to avoid sounding like a televangelist with his hands out in the process.  I have found, in my preparations for this series, that generous, cheerful giving ONLY comes down-stream from healthy thankfulness.

Our American traditions of giving thanks in the autumn, as the harvest completes, paints a beautiful picture of why we are grateful.  God is sovereign over the sun and the rain; in some years the crops yield little, and in other years the crops yield much.  In times of plenty or want, we are reminded just Who controls all things.  Our baptist fore-fathers were among the English separatists who became the pilgrims to the new world.  Perhaps some of them voiced prayers of gratitude around Plymouth in the 1600s.  Allow me to commend to you, George Washington’s 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation.  You can search online and find it easily.  Read it.  Read it this year, and many years.  Read it with your family and friends.  President Washington understood that he, and his fellow patriots had much for which to be thankful.  He also understood to whom he should give thanks.

As we fly through November into the advent season, decorate how and when you want to.  Join me in eating a Little Debbie cake or two (or 40).  Fill your home with laughter and loved ones (and football?).  Fill your kitchen and bellies with delicious food.  Fill your calendar with dinners and get-togethers, and shopping trips as you check of the lists.  It’s good to do all these things, but give pause, and fill your mind and heart with gratitude.  O give thanks – to the Lord – for He is good; His faithful love endures forever!!

With gladness in your heart, thanks-giving in your spirit,
be quick to praise the Lord, let all around you hear it!
Let others know what He has done.  Praise God who gave His only Son.
Sing, congregation, sing!
--A.J.