Thanksgiving Thoughts

by BC
(St. Louis, MO)

I hope everyone had a restful and enjoyable Thanksgiving. We had snow! Of course, it melted after about a day, but it still cast the landscape into a silent and peaceful pristine white.

I enjoyed seeing all of my extended family, and meeting a newborn cousin for the first time! For me, Thanksgiving is about family, as well as about the food. There was an overabundance of food, as usual, but I don’t think that is the intent behind the original Thanksgiving. The Puritans were grateful to the local Indians (natives) for their assistance in growing crops and learning how to survive the cold, northeastern winter. Indeed, these Puritans owed the natives their very lives; the natives were a true gift from God Himself! I think the feast was a side effect of their gratitude. Food was a true labor of love back then; they had to toil many hours a day for many months of the year just to eke out an existence. Imagine the bounty of that day! But also imagine the sharing of the food with perhaps people who hadn’t done anything to harvest it. Whether a person is “needy” or not, we are called to share. In fact, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that Jesus never told us to share…He told us to give! And so the Puritans—as well as the natives--gave out of their largesse. What a wonderful example they are to us today. We, in our abundance, scrupulously hoard and save every bit we have. How much more the blessing when we give?!

These are my deep thoughts for the week. Not too much about solar cooking here (not a whole lot of anything “solar” going on around here lately!), though I am grateful for my solar oven and for living in a time and place where I am able to purchase one relatively easily. No, these are just the ruminations of a woman filled with gratitude for every blessing that comes down from Heaven!