Category: Holidays

Worth Revisiting: Around the Table

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With the approach of Thanksgiving, my thoughts return to the table which I so customarily gathered around in my childhood. There in the small kitchen of my grandmother’s home was a simple maple table with 6 chairs around. To the eye there was nothing unusual about it, but the love and memories that always surrounded it fill me with warmth to this very day. Endless games of dominoes played, many great discussions weighed, numerous pies and casseroles made- family life had encircled its relatively small frame.

On most occasions there was plenty of room, as family would come and go at various times. Sundays after church no one dared miss her homemade fried chicken and mashed potatoes or the dessert cooling on the back porch. And though it was a small home, surprisingly it rarely felt small. Yet for Thanksgiving and Christmas every square inch of space in my Grandmother’s home seemed in use, especially her table.

As one of the youngest generation, I was always at the kid’s table. A fact that for many years I optimistically looked to change. Why you may ask? First of all, we were the last to be seated and fed. More than that, however, was that all of the interesting conversations seemed to happen at the adult table. Here, they shared their joys, sorrows, while supporting and challenging one another to stay the course. They told stories, jokes, laughed and cried.Through it all love, faith and hope remained.

Before you knew it, all my wishing to be included at the adult table became a reality. My cousins and I were home from college and were even entreated to sit for a spell. This was it, I thought, now I am finally regarded as a grown up. What I did not pause to consider, though, was the graced responsibility that being present in these conversations entailed. These were not easy problems with a ready answer, but quite often required more listening than speaking and a great deal of prayer.

Over the years, I have become a solid member at the adult table, now in the upper tier of my family. Looking back, I finally realize what all those years around the kid’s table had been for. Preparation. It was in that time spent with my cousins where we too had laughed, shared, and formed community that we would return to when we would later need to rely on one another.Thus thankfulness is for me found around the table. For more than the delicious food consumed there is the presence and gift of fellowship.

Please take time this season to offer up praise for your place around the table, whether it be at your home or at another’s. Be willing to be vulnerable in your sharing , be generous in your listening, and merciful in your response. And always let prayer and love be your guide.

In Thanksgiving for each of you,

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Sowing Gratitude

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Let your roots grow down into Him, and let your lives be built on Him. Then your faith will grow strong in truth you were taught and you will overflow with thankfulness. Colossians 2:7

About this time of year many of us take a moment to reflect on all of our blessings and the things that we have to be grateful for. Yet, why is it that gratitude so often has become such a seasonal pastime or a clever marketing cliche hung up on our walls? And, what about the challenges and trials we face, are we ever thankful for those? I’d venture to say that most likely we do more complaining than we ever do praising God for his constant companionship and the smaller things in life in experienced difficulty and joy.

In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.

Growing up, though I never had everything I thought I wanted,  I always had all that I needed. A life lived in gratitude began not, however, from suddenly receiving the perfect gift or from an act or two of kindness, but from constantly witnessing it in the lives of those closest to me. For my mother, more than an acquaintance put on for social norms, gratitude was sown much like the soybean and cotton fields she worked on with her family.

As a small girl, she would awake shortly before 4 am, dress and quickly head for the barn. Though she might not have been ready, the cows were and she understood the great responsibility for their care and that of family. Breakfast depended and waited on the cows being milked, the eggs collected and chickens fed. And while she worked rather than bemoan the lost time in bed, she would often dream of the warm biscuits and pan gravy that would accompany her morning efforts.

With an assortment of hand me downs and few things of her own one might incorrectly assume that she simply never knew the difference. One pair of new shoes a year were not the result of an expectation but rather of a summer’s hard work out in the field.  And blessings, well they were recounted on the front porch under the stars listening to stories of health and financial storms weathered and new possibilities on the horizon. Sunday service was then a true celebration, a time to give thanks for all that God had given and to share that with their neighbors in need.

“Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind,  for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.” Psalm 107:8-9

I thought of this spirit of gratitude last weekend as my family and I worked to collect food for our local food pantry drive. Home from college, my son had decided that there was no where he would rather be at 6:30 than out in the cold with me greeting parishioners with bags in hand.  Joining us a bit later my husband and youngest arrived too and my heart felt full. This was the legacy of gratitude that had been passed on to my mother then to me and that now I could leave to my children.

“I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way” 1 Cor. 4-5.

This is none more evident than at the close of day when we gather together as a family to pray. Going round in a circle, from oldest to youngest we offer up our prayers of petition and praise. Any guests that happen to be present are also invited to share. In this way, all things big and small in our lives are brought before God and one another. It has become such an important part in our lives, we have even have had call ins when one of us is away.

Wherever you are today, God is calling you near. If you long to hear His voice, begin with a moment of gratitude for something, however small, that you are truly thankful for. Odds are this will be followed by other things perhaps forgotten or overlooked in your life. Then you are invited to share these occasions with someone else. Become a sower of gratitude today. You need not know or see all its effects to realize that gratitude is a gift that cannot be contained but overflows in many expressions.

A Blessed Thanksgiving to you all!

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Around the Table

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With the approach of Thanksgiving, my thoughts return to the table which I so customarily gathered around in my childhood. There in the small kitchen of my grandmother’s home was a simple maple table with 6 chairs around. To the eye there was nothing unusual about it, but the love and memories that always surrounded it fill me with warmth to this very day. Endless games of dominoes played, many great discussions weighed, numerous pies and casseroles made- family life had encircled its relatively small frame.

On most occasions there was plenty of room, as family would come and go at various times. Sundays after church no one dared miss her homemade fried chicken and mashed potatoes or the dessert cooling on the back porch. And though it was a small home, surprisingly it rarely felt small. Yet for Thanksgiving and Christmas every square inch of space in my Grandmother’s home seemed in use, especially her table.

As one of the youngest generation, I was always at the kid’s table. A fact that for many years I optimistically looked to change. Why you may ask? First of all, we were the last to be seated and fed. More than that, however, was that all of the interesting conversations seemed to happen at the adult table. Here, they shared their joys, sorrows, while supporting and challenging one another to stay the course. They told stories, jokes, laughed and cried.Through it all love, faith and hope remained.

Before you knew it, all my wishing to be included at the adult table became a reality. My cousins and I were home from college and were even entreated to sit for a spell. This was it, I thought, now I am finally regarded as a grown up. What I did not pause to consider, though, was the graced responsibility that being present in these conversations entailed. These were not easy problems with a ready answer, but quite often required more listening than speaking and a great deal of prayer.

Over the years, I have become a solid member at the adult table, now in the upper tier of my family. Looking back, I finally realize what all those years around the kid’s table had been for. Preparation. It was in that time spent with my cousins where we too had laughed, shared, and formed community that we would return to when we would later need to rely on one another.Thus thankfulness is for me found around the table. For more than the delicious food consumed there is the presence and gift of fellowship.

Please take time this season to offer up praise for your place around the table, whether it be at your home or at another’s. Be willing to be vulnerable in your sharing , be generous in your listening, and merciful in your response. And always let prayer and love be your guide.

In Thanksgiving for each of you,

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