Come, Ye Thankful

Giving thanks for grace evidenced in family

While focusing on thankfulness at this season of the year, I find myself halting between two opinions: the first being a wondering at why we so often relegate thankfulness to this lone season of the year. Are we not grateful in spring/summer/winter? Do we not relish beaches and barbecues as much as pumpkins and turkey? The flip side of that same thought is joyfulness that our hurry-up world takes the time to stop and smell the burning leaf piles and enjoy the bounty of the season.

This year my thankfulness has been refocused on the grace of God and how the many pleasures and pains we enjoy reflect Him (Ephesians 5:20). So I look around me and I see . . .

—a well-tended lawn, and I'm thankful for the grace of God in giving me a husband willing to work hard (even at things he does not enjoy); for God's grace in giving mankind dominion over the earth; for the genius of a God Who created boxwood plants, Bermuda grass, dogwood trees, purple cabbages, and endless summer hydrangeas and for His infinite goodness in making me to enjoy the bounty and beauty of them.
—a family that at this moment enjoys health and harmony, and I'm thankful for God's never-ending love that allows four very different people to laugh and cry and work, and—yes, even disagree at times—but in the end make choices that build each other up.
—a Empire chest covered with dust, and I give thanks for that greyish, silty reminder that we are temporal beings who will be planted in earth, God tarrying.

In this time of thanks, I rest thankful that "in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).