Dear Friends and Family.
We have reached that time of year
once again where we set aside one day, one special day to ponder what we have
to be thankful for. I know many of you who may see or read this today, may be
struggling to feel a sense of thankfulness in the mountains and storms that you
may be facing today. Please understand that I am writing this and sending out a
general prayer for all of you attached with my own feeble love. I hope you feel
it today.
If you are struggling with thankfulness, please trust me,
you are not alone. Every week that passes by, I am sure that like me, you are
faced with challenges, storms, hard decisions, pushing past pain, wandering
through loneliness, and sometimes feeling like the mountains are just too high
for you to continue on. But, I can tell you too, that there is always hope.
And hope has a name.
Jesus.
There are numerous sayings that I could quote to hopefully
lift your spirits today. I am afraid though that for some of you they might
just come off too cliché or insincere.
What I want to leave with you instead is just my heartfelt encouragement
to stop right now. Take a deep breath (even if your heart is not in it just
yet) and then let it slowly out while telling God thank you. Thank Him for the
following things:
Thank Him for your precious and one of a kind life that only
you have and only you can live to its fullest.
Thank Him as much for the storms in your life as much as the
good times since I(We) know he walks with us through all of them.
Thank Him for the family, friends, and co-workers he has let
cross your path and the many gifts both physical and spiritual that they have
shared with you.
Thank Him that He has blessed you with yet another day to
both live to its fullest and for the chances it gives you to pay His love
forward to those your life inevitably touches.
And, Thank Him above all for His greatest gift, His life
paid in every precious drop of His blood on a cross so long ago despite our
unworthiness.
You can add all of your own thanksgiving to the above. God
dwells here in the praises of His people.
Don’t just live this thankfulness today, but live it out
daily. Write your thankfulness down in a journal to set up altars of remembrance
so that you never forget God’s ongoing, never ending, and unquenchable
provision to those who love and worship Him.
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and may this precious
special day start a tradition of daily thankfulness that carries you on until
that day when you will be able to thank Him at his feet in Eternity.
In Christ’s love,
Mike Meehan