Thanksgiving!

Sometimes the worst dinnertime disaster at Thanksgiving has nothing to do with the turkey – it’s the family. Does your family Thanksgiving look like a Norman Rockwell painting or a Jerry Springer grudge match with flying metal folding chairs? I’ll never forget the year that we were trying to logistically plan things out for Thanksgiving dinner with our own family. 

For a few years, we had it at the home of a person who didn’t cook and he ordered the dinner from a restaurant. Kind of like an upscale Turkey Box Lunch. But that year he had a new girlfriend who wanted Thanksgiving at her house. She lived in a small house with a huge undisciplined dog and her own tradition was to invite eleven of her closest relatives and friends. Even though she was engaged to this member of our immediate family, we still didn’t make the cut and were not invited. Then the family matriarch intervened and her son’s fiancée extended a reluctant, last-minute invitation to us, but we were told that because the house was too small, we’d have to sit outside on a small patch of grass and dirt next to the dog house.

The second-tier guests like us were going to be confined in the tiny back yard with the 120 pound dog and I didn’t want to be wrestling with a Rottweiler over a turkey leg, so I was hoping that maybe we could just park in their driveway and they would serve us a Turkey Box Lunch in the car. At this point in the Thanksgiving planning, the family tension increased and so we rebelliously did something that we had never done before. 

We drove to Carpinteria and bought two turkey Subway Sandwiches. The sun-warmed beach was devoid of people and it was like being on a deserted island. It was Thanksgiving in paradise! We sat in the shade of palm trees, enjoyed the fresh ocean breeze, ate our turkey sandwiches and the pumpkin scones I had made for dessert. It was the most wonderful and meaningful Thanksgiving day that we’ve ever had!

(I’m obviously going to encourage you to spend Thanksgiving with your family, but I did get some Subway coupons in my mailbox last week and if we don’t use them this year, just let me know if you’d like to have them.)

Family is important to us and God made us that way. We were created to be in relationship with those who God has given to us and to whom we have been given. We were created to live in a family relationship, but today’s families face a minefield of trigger topics where even the mildest remark about the weather can unleash a diatribe on climate change or a niece’s newborn baby boy can trigger a heated discussion about the child’s right to choose its own gender. And don’t even think about saying the word, “Trump!”

A segment of our culture has called for the elimination of Thanksgiving because of its “environmental impact on climate change” and an MSNBC host described the day as a “problematic food holiday.” The celebrated entrée – a turkey – is now, according to progressive activists, a white supremacist symbol of racist, colonialism. An editorial in today's LA Times reminds us that Thanksgiving "commemorates" the genocide of the indigenous people and is not a day of celebration but a day of mourning. 

Many in our Nation have been indoctrinated to hate any person who does not conform to their political doctrine, but the media’s agenda to sustain our rage does not have to provide the context for our Thanksgiving family dinner. This is a season of thanksgiving! Time for us to thank God for the grace He has so lovingly given to us. Time to let that grace flow through us to others in our circle of family and friends. Time to see other people not through our own eyes but through God’s eyes. Thanksgiving should be a time of warmth, harmony and peace with family and friends, but in a fractious family, how do we do that?

If conversations turn political, simply don’t engage – just listen without replying. But what if we’ve chosen to not engage and another person becomes verbally combative: “So why don’t you hate Trump/Biden/DeSantis/Musk?” The best response may be a mild, “That’s not a conversation to have while we’re enjoying this day together, maybe we can talk about it later.” And if you’ve been mocked or belittled for your Christian beliefs and values, “turn the other cheek” and extend the grace to forgive, remembering that a good definition of forgiveness is “Simply no longer holding against a person what deserves to be held against them.” 

While we cannot control the behavior of others, we can control our own. On Thanksgiving day and everyday, we are responsible for what comes from our own mouth. “The tongue has the power of life and death” Proverbs 18:21 meaning that our words can either speak life, or our words can speak death. As Christians, our words are to strengthen, encourage and comfort others. 1 Corinthians 14:3 NLT The words from our lips, pour out of our heart and form the image of how others see us. A friend once told me about a message she had seen on a church sign: “If the words you spoke were written on your skin, would you still be beautiful?” This Thanksgiving, let’s make sure that our own words are kind and filled with the grace of God. “Kind words are like honey.. sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.” Proverbs 16:24-26 NLT   Amen?

Rejoice Always?

Dear Friends,

I was Cleo’s last pastor and every September I remember the day we celebrated her 105th birthday five years ago. Since then, she has left this mortal life to live out her timeless existence in Heaven with her Lord Jesus Christ. But if you had been with me on that day she turned 105, you would have been shocked at how vital, lively and full of life this wonderful woman of God was. For many years, we had been holding a Wednesday service at Cleo’s assisted living home and she had not missed a single service. She’d park her wheelchair in the front row directly in front of me and everyone knew that was Miss Cleo’s “reserved” space! Church was what she looked forward to all week long. The residents knew that Cleo was the person to go to if they needed to talk to someone, had a question about God or needed prayer. Cleo was the oldest person I’d ever known and was the happiest person I’d ever known. When people would ask her what the secret was to her long life or ask how she could be so filled with joy all the time, she always gave the same answer to either question. She would tell you the answer is that she was always grateful to God, for everything, all of the time. And she really was!

One of the most troubling scriptures is, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Troubling because it seems as if God is telling us to do the impossible. Rejoice always? Pray constantly? Give thanks in everything? Impossible we say! But God never asks us to do the impossible and Jesus reminded His followers that in the Kingdom of God: “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.” Matthew 19:26 And for us pessimistic naysayers who pin the word “impossible” on God’s commandments to us like a badge of defeat, we would only have to look at the radiant smile on Cleo’s face to see that with God, it really is possible to rejoice always!

Much of our unhappiness comes from stress and anxiety that’s created by circumstances outside our control. We are angry, sad, fearful. Today’s level of political and cultural hatred of those who do not share our political beliefs is astounding. Surveys are showing that 70-90% of the people in major cities no longer feel safe living there. Putin is threatening to launch a nuclear warhead and this week we’re reading about newfound major earthquake faults in Southern California and a major hurricane is headed toward Florida. Life in these United States can be scary and stressful and yet God says to rejoice always? Really? 

Yes! Because in the middle of the worst and most fearsome circumstances, when we know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, all is well with our soul. But we still may have no internal peace if we live with one foot in the sacred and one foot in the secular. Of course we’ll be unhappy, fearful and stressed during our week if our only time in the presence of God is for an hour and a half in church on a Sunday morning. 

That’s why God says we are not to rejoice just on Sunday morning, we are to “Rejoice in the Lord always..” Philippians 4:4 And here’s how to do that: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7 Do you want to “rejoice always”? Then we need to pray “without ceasing” and give our cares and worries to God.

Born the granddaughter of a freed slave, Cleo grew up in the poverty of the South, but as a young girl in church, she learned that despite life’s circumstances, in everything you can find something to be thankful for. We don’t give thanks for everything. We don’t thank God for that devastating diagnosis we just received from our doctor. We don’t give thanks for earthquakes, fires and floods, but the word of God tells us that “in everything give thanks.” The morning after hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New Jersey in 2012, a woman was interviewed by a news reporter. As she looked at her flooded house and ruined possessions she said, “We were blessed. It could have been worse.” 

According to the Harvard School of Medicine, being thankful is one of the simplest ways to feel better. According to the Harvard Medical newsletter:

“The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means gratefulness. Gratitude is a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives. In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness.”

Cleo showed us that when we are constantly grateful to God and are thankful in all things, we will find ourselves rejoicing always. Do you want to feel better than you do? Do you want to be happier and healthier? Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in all things give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.   Amen?

Give Thanks!

Dear Friends,

Those of you who know me may have noticed the scar. About an inch long, it runs vertically through my eyebrow and down to the very top of my right eye. It’s where I was hit in the face with the sharp edge of a shovel when I was six years old. If the point of the shovel had been ½ inch lower it would have been embedded in my eye. If you hadn’t noticed the scar, I typically don’t either. In fact, for the longest time, I’d forgotten it was there. Then one Thanksgiving morning, a few years ago, I looked in the bathroom mirror and saw that old scar as if for the first time. At that moment, I realized that I had never thanked God for saving my sight and began wondering what else I’d never thanked Him for. I thought of when I was young man and engaged to the hot-blooded Sicilian girl who broke our engagement by trying to kill me with a butcher knife. I realized that I had never thanked God for saving me from a marriage to her!

And then like a slide show, face after face from my past appeared in my mind and I realized that I’d never thanked God for Father Barnes, the rector at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, who believed that I needed to start serving God as an acolyte when I was only nine and who started me on the path to God that I’m still on today. Many other faces came to mind and I thanked God for them. I still do. And perhaps you are now remembering your own scars and the times God bailed you of a bad circumstance. Or maybe like the country song “Thank God For Unanswered Prayers,” God didn’t give you what you’d prayed for and gave you something or someone better. Are you seeing faces of people you’ve never thanked God for?

Every Thanksgiving, I think of an Episcopal priest named Father Tim. He was a fictional character in a series of books written by Christian author Jan Karon about life in a small town called Mitford. And in one story, Father Tim wondered: What if God took away from him everything that he had not thanked God for?

That’s something to just stop and think about. What if God did take away from us everything we had not been thankful for? Would I have my right eye? For over sixty years I had never thanked God for saving it from the blade of that shovel! What if everything God gave you, that you never thanked Him for, disappeared in a flash? What would you have left in your house? Would you even have a house? What would you have left in your life? Would you still have your health? Your hearing? Would you still have your Bible? How about your clothes? Would you still have the unique personality that God has gifted you with? 

If God deleted what you never thanked Him for, would you instantly become as dumb as a rock as your intelligence vanished into thin air? Would you still have your sense of humor? Would you still have the ability to discern right from wrong? Would you still have your salvation? Would you still have your love for God? Have you ever thanked God for those things? Maybe even more importantly than what you would have left in your life is who you would have left. If God took away everyone you had never thanked Him for, would you still have all your family? Your friends? The people at your church? Would you still have your dog? Your cat?

When I realized that if I thanked God for everything He has ever given me.. Everything He has done for me.. For every meal I have ever eaten.. For everyone He has sent to bless my life.. Every time He healed me.. Every time He protected me from illness.. injury.. death.. Every time He protected me from my incredibly foolish decisions and actions.. I realized that if I thanked Him for everything He had ever done for me, I’d be thanking Him unceasingly from now until the end of time. And in that “ah-hah” moment, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 immediately came to mind: Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

But how about those circumstances when it just seems like it’s impossible to be thankful? Because let’s face it. We don’t just cruise through this life on easy street. The truth is that Jesus said: “In the world you will have tribulation..” and I think that all of us can say “yes and amen” to that. But then we rejoice as Jesus goes on to say, “..but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.” John 16:33 

All of us have experienced immense pain and grief in our past. And, here we are today with thankful hearts praising the Lord. How did we get through the trials and tribulations we’ve experienced so far? Because God is always right there in the midst of the worst thing that can ever happen to you.

We can only be truly thankful when our thankfulness is no longer a condition of our circumstances. We are not thanking Him for all things. The scripture says we thank Him in all things because no matter what our circumstances, there is always something for which we can be thankful. And then when we are thankful in all things we find ourselves rejoicing always. And, when we rejoice always, we find ourselves being thankful in all things. 

So let’s enter into a season of Thanksgiving by asking God to show us all the things that we never thanked Him for. Give thanks to God for all that He has given you and done for you. Give thanks even in the tribulations. And as you gather with family and friends, let your loved ones know how grateful you are to God and show them that Thanksgiving is not about a turkey dinner and it never has been. It’s about giving thanks to God. Amen?

Thanksgiving Grace!

Dear Friends,

When I was a kid, we said grace at every meal and our family tradition was for us to take turns. My mom and dad said the traditional prayers of the Episcopal Church that were found in the back of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and my dad would solemnly intone: “Bless O Lord, thy gifts to our use; And us to thy loving service; And make us ever mindful of the needs of others; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”  

While I would like you to think that I was a deeply spiritual lad, the truth is that in my haste to eat, my prayer was a fast, three second one-word ritual: 

“GodisGreatandGodisGoodandweThankHimforthisFood!”

My sister’s grace was “Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub! Yay! God!” which was definitely not found in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.

Saying grace before the meal was so important to my family that on Thanksgiving and Christmas they even called in a professional. Well, sort of.. My mom's cousin was a Congregational Church minister so when their family came to dinner, he always became the designated “prayer.” His church was the oldest (founded in 1867), largest Protestant church in Los Angeles and I looked up to and admired this man of God. He didn’t just say grace. He would incorporate a three-point sermon into a Thanksgiving prayer with words of thanks for everything and a word of blessing for everyone. By the time he was finished, the turkey had grown cold, a fatty layer had congealed on the now-chilled gravy and his own children would be looking at each other and sneaking glances at the dining room clock. But when you said “amen,” the meal had been sanctified and so had the family time. Our dining room had become a church and God had been invited to join us at the table. 

Giving a blessing after a meal comes from Jewish Law: “When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you.” Deuteronomy 8:10 But in the New Testament, we find Jesus giving thanks to God before the meal. “And when He had taken the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to His disciples...” Mark 6:41 And then when Jesus met the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, “Now it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.” Luke 24:30 Jesus’ prayer of thanks to the Father before meals became a Christian liturgy taught by His disciples and we read, “And when he (Paul) had said these things, he took bread and gave thanks to God in the presence of them all; and when he had broken it he began to eat.” Acts 27:35

Saying grace is the spiritual time-out between the flurry of activity before the meal and the meal itself. It's the quiet moment at home when the food has been brought to the table. We pause and bow our heads in prayer. We ask God to bless and sanctify our meal in remembrance that all that we have, including all that we eat, is from God, and we are thankful to Him for His good and perfect gifts to us. James 1:17 

It's also the pause to remember that our meals are not magically transported to our plate after being created in the "StarTrek Replicator." Someone grew, raised or caught your food. If you are eating vegetables, someone spent all day bent over at the waist in the hot sun to handpick them for you. In the grocery store, a minimum-wage produce clerk carefully arranged those veggies on the chilled shelves and perhaps someone other than yourself prepared and cooked your meal. We are thankful for them. And as we sit down to an abundant meal, we are also mindful that according to Christian agencies, 925 million people in the world will go to bed tonight still hungry. We pray for them. Perhaps we even pray for God to show us how we can help someone in need.

If you don't normally say grace, start a new tradition in your life and express your gratitude to a gracious God before your meals. Extemporaneous prayers from the heart are wonderful and so are the timeless traditional prayers. You just read the Episcopal prayer in the first paragraph and a traditional Catholic prayer is “Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ, our Lord.” Methodists pray, “Be present at our table Lord. Be here and everywhere adored. These mercies bless and grant that we may feast in fellowship with Thee.” A beautiful Eastern Orthodox prayer is “O Christ God, bless the food and drink of Thy servants, for holy art Thou, always, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.” A traditional Lutheran prayer is “Come, Lord Jesus, be our Guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed.” (Unless you’re a youth pastor at a Baptist Bible Camp you may not want to pray my sister’s prayer and I know you can do better than my childhood grace!) But no matter how and what you pray, this Thanksgiving make sure someone says grace before you tuck into that plate of turkey because “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31

Our First Christian Holiday

Dear Friends,

I had read about a Washington D.C. politician who was vilifying the church and Christians because we don’t like the secular direction in which our Nation is going. He said, “If Christians don’t like it here, they can just go start their own country..”  Well..  Actually.. we already did that.. It’s called America.

It was November in 1620 when the Christian Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. 102 people had set sail for the New World from England on the Mayflower. Four died during the rough journey, and after landing, another 45 died during an unexpected bitterly harsh winter.

One year later in November 1621, the fifty-three survivors (including 14 teenagers and 13 small children) declared a Day of Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims (Puritans) were the English Protestant Reformers who had always set aside special days of worship and prayer and those Christian practices had not changed in the move to America. When the Pilgrims landed in this strange wilderness, they immediately struck up a friendship with the Indians who taught them how to plant and harvest corn. These Native Americans showed the Pilgrim men how to fish and how to hunt the wild turkeys. In return, the Pilgrims gave them tools and showed them how to use them. So when the Pilgrims declared a three day feast of worship, prayer and giving thanks to God, they celebrated their blessings with their new Indian friends. Ninety Wampanoag Indians brought five freshly-killed deer to the “church potluck” and joined the fifty-three Pilgrims for this Nation’s first Thanksgiving feast. 

These first settlers celebrated many more feast days of thanksgiving by acknowledging the Lord God as their Sovereign Provider thus providing a spiritual principle which has undergirded the foundation of our Nation. John Adams was the 2nd U.S. President and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, Adams described the principles upon which our Country was founded and the Declaration of Independence was written: 

"The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved independence, were the.. general Principles of Christianity, in which all these Sects were United. Now I will avow, that I then believe, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System."

And by the time the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, Thanksgiving had been celebrated in America for over 150 years! From these first days in our Nation's history, days of thanksgiving were also periodically called by government leaders. And a yearly holy day (holiday) was established by a Presidential Proclamation in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November, “..as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.” Congress later changed this day of celebration to the fourth Thursday in November.  

Thanksgiving is more than just food and football! It has always been, a uniquely American Christian holiday! We join in this wonderful tradition set forth by our Nation's Christian forefathers as we celebrate the majesty of God, giving Him praise and thanksgiving! 

"Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever... Oh, that men would give thanks to the LORD for His goodness, and for His wonderful works...” Psalm 107:1,8

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NOTE: More and more we are reading about those who are attempting to revise history and portray the Pilgrims as evil and the first Thanksgiving as a secular event. This from Christianity Today magazine is detailed and interesting.

Thanksgiving With Family This Year?

The NEW Thanksgiving! No masks required! Now you can enjoy your virtual Thanksgiving meal with the family in the privacy and safety of your own home. No more taking a tiny amount of Aunt Martha’s Jell-O Fruit Salad, eating that one polite bite and covering up the rest with your napkin when you help clear the table. Now you can gaze upon an ultra-high definition image of her jittery canned fruit without having to actually have it slip around on your plate and slime your turkey leg! Add a home theater surround sound system and you’ll replicate the authentic Thanksgiving experience of Ned’s false teeth clacking as he worries on a wing bone and your niece Brianna smacking her lips and softly belching as she reaches for another lumberjack-sized portion of mashed potatoes. And the best part is that after dinner you won’t need to sit on the couch between rowdy cousins Bill and Ed to watch a football game! You can just say goodbye and click on “Leave Meeting.”

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For many of us, Thanksgiving will be different this year and we’re not at all happy about that. L.A. County permits Thanksgiving family dinners with no more than two households, outside, wearing masks, sitting six feet from each other and a two hour time limit. Oh..and each family should bring their own food and utensils. Yeah. Right. But a recent survey shows that 55% of people will ignore Health Department orders and spend Thanksgiving with their family the same as always. 40% say it will be with more than ten people and the majority say they won’t be wearing a mask.

For those evaluating the risk of being with family and friends on Thanksgiving, it would be wise to do so under the assumption that nobody will be wearing a mask. That’s because the guidelines to wear a mask in the company of others, except when you are eating, give us a false sense of protection and may impair our ability to wisely evaluate the risks. Let me explain. Most of us will be inside and the current guidelines are to wear a mask and stay six feet apart. We sit around and talk for, let’s say, an hour before the meal, removing our mask to drink and to eat the  appetizers. We all then remove the masks and for the next hour or so we sit two or three feet away from each other or across the table from each other while we eat, talk, joke, laugh and belch. (Okay maybe that last one is just my family) Studies have now shown that Covid is spread by talking and breathing and so, after filling the air with large droplets and aerosolized microdroplets from our lungs and potentially exposing everyone at the table to any virus we may have, we put the mask back on and return to the living room. That means that assessing the risk is asking yourself, “I’m I comfortable with the thought of every invited guest, possibly sitting unmasked three feet away from my face while they’re talking and laughing?”

In California where we are already experiencing a major surge in coronavirus cases, hospitals are preparing for a post-Thanksgiving rush that could be overwhelming. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases said last week that we need to evaluate the risk of gathering with family and friends. He tells us that we need to consider age, underlining medical conditions, testing and quarantine of people who have traveled. We also need to consider the life-styles of all others who will be invited to that Thanksgiving dinner. Are they mask or no mask people? Do they go to dinners at friend’s houses or restaurants? Hang out with a large circle of friends or shelter at home with the cats? Unless we know them well enough to answer those questions, we must consider them to be potentially “high-risk” to us. Dr. Fauci said that maybe right now is not the time to have people in your house when you have to take your mask off as you’re eating and he encourages us to “seriously think about the risk-benefit ratio” meaning that a Thanksgiving feast may not be worth the two weeks in the hospital. .

As much as we love Thanksgiving, we must set aside our emotional desire to be with family and friends and objectively consider the risk. Because the most reliable tests generate false positives and false negatives, testing isn’t the answer. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the current best estimate for Covid-19 infections that are asymptomatic is 40%. That’s why temperature screening and health questions are not the answer. As long as masks must be removed during the actual dinner, masks are not the answer. We need to use prayerful discernment in deciding how we spend our holidays this year. 

There are no “Covid Scriptures” in our Bible other than the one to “Love one another.” That means to do them no harm and we need to understand that our strong emotional desire to be with family and friends no matter what the risk, is a self-centered one that may impact the health of the loved ones we most desire to see. Loving others means not just evaluating the risk to ourselves but to our loved ones as well. I pray that God gives each one of us a heaping measure of both wisdom and discernment during these most difficult of decisions.  Amen?

Be The Dog! Be Happy!

Dear Friends,

Excerpts from the diary of a dog:

6 am

Hallelujah! I’m awake! What an awesome day! I love going outside first thing in the   morning. Hey it’s raining. I love the rain! I love to run through the mud! Wheeeeeee!

7 am

Yipee! Here’s my dog food! How awesome it is that this is the very same dry food I’ve had every day for the last 12 years. I love this food!

8 am

Hey look! There’s a cat in the back yard! Let’s chase it! BARK! BARK! BARK! Dang! Over the fence. Missed it again. They’re always too fast. I love cats!

9 am

Time for my morning nap. I love my morning nap!

10 am

Wahoo! A car ride? I love car rides! They’re my favorite! To the vet? Thanks Dad! I love going to the vet! Deworming and a Parvo shot? Yay!!

11 am

Oh boy! I’m back in my yard again. I love my yard!

1 pm

Awesome! Here comes my Dad with the dog brush. I love to be brushed!

1:30 pm

Wow! A dog biscuit! With poultry by-products! Can my life get any better than this? I love dog biscuits!

3 pm

Whoopee! I’m in the house again. My Dad’s the most wonderfully awesome, most perfect person in the entire world! I love being with my Dad!

4 pm

Hooray! My favorite dog food again! This is sooo awesome! I love my dog food!

9 pm

All right! It’s time to go to bed! I love going to bed!

Excerpts from the diary of a cat: 

“I nearly succeeded at killing the prison guard this morning. I ran between her feet as she was walking into the kitchen. She almost went down but grabbed onto the counter. I must re-attempt this technique in a more open area where there’s nothing to stop her fall. I’ve been held against my will in captivity for eight years and three months. My captor continues to taunt me with bizarre little plastic things on the floor she calls toys. She also apparently gets a perverse sort of amusement out of tricking me into chasing a red dot that she shines on the floor. She thinks I can’t hear her laughing when I fail to catch the dot. I am subjected to this ridicule and diabolical cruelty every time she thinks I need to exercise.” 

“For the entire time I’ve been confined to her house, my captor dines lavishly on freshly cooked meals while I am forced to eat dry cat food. My only hope is to eventually escape. She guards the doors to the outside, and to the freedom I so long for, but one day success will be mine.” 

“The only joy in life is for the minuscule payback I am able to devise to make the guard’s life miserable. Last week when she left her underwear drawer open, I was able to jump into it and hack up a hair ball. I ran under the bed when she found it. I have done everything possible to show how I feel about being held in this prison. When I caught a mouse, I bit off its head and left the carcass on her pillow.” 

“I did that out of spite, but she read a book on cat behavior, thought I was lonely and so she brought more cats into the house for me to “play with.” The prison conditions are already overcrowded as is, but the new cats do give me someone to torture while she’s at work. This miserable confinement is unbearable, and my only relief is scheming of ways to torment the other feline prisoners. Today, I’ll destroy the side of the guard’s antique couch with my claws and when she comes home, I’ll pretend to be asleep on her bed and look all cute and innocent. She’ll blame it on those clueless cats playing and racing around the living room...” 

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Have you known people who were like the cat? Feeling captive in their circumstances, they grumbled about everything in their life. Oversensitive and passive-aggressive, they saw themselves as victims of their spouse, boss, the government. Their only hope was to dream of the day when they could escape to a better job, a better house, a better  spouse. They could find no good in their circumstances. They had no peace. During a time of sharing at a Thanksgiving church service, I once asked a woman what she had to be thankful for. She hissed into the microphone, “I have NOTHING to be thankful for!”  (I love being a pastor!!)

So what if we were to live life like the dog? 6 am: Oh Boy! What a wonderful day that You have made God! Let me truly rejoice and be glad in it! All Right! Time for my coffee! I love my coffee! Time to clean the house! Thank you Lord for giving me the safety and security of a roof over my head when billions of people don’t even have water and electricity. I love cleaning my house! Lookee here! A traffic jam on my way to work! That just gives me more time to relax and pray! Lord, I love these interruptions in my day when I can come into Your presence with prayer. Oh Boy! I get to go to the dentist today! A root canal? You’re kidding me, Doc! That’s awesome! So you can save that tooth and I can keep eating crunchie munchies and I can eat ice cream on that side of my mouth again? That’s wonderful news, Doc! Yes, please..I’d love a root canal!

Make a pledge this Thanksgiving. If you’re the cat, repent! Become the dog by being grateful in every circumstance. When you replace grumbling with gratitude, your entire life will be changed and God will be pleased! “In all things give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (We are not thankful for all things but in all things we can always find something to be thankful for.) Psalm 118:24 says “This is the day that the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad in it.” Wagging your tail is optional.

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On a Personal Note: The dog and cat diaries are based on an old joke I remembered and rewrote to describe my dog Elysee. When she was alive, I used to tell people I lived at Saint Elysee’s Monastery. That’s still how I think of my house. Today I have three cats who are each practically perfect in nearly every way and are the exact opposite of the one in my version of the cat diary. (Please understand that I have to say that for my own protection. They know where I sleep at night.)

Surviving Thanksgiving With Your Family!

Dear Friends,

Sometimes the worst dinnertime disaster at Thanksgiving has nothing to do with the turkey – it’s the family. Does your Thanksgiving look like a Norman Rockwell painting where the entire family is practically perfect in nearly every way? If so, don’t waste your time reading this week’s AMEN Corner. Does your Thanksgiving look like a Jerry Springer grudge match with flying metal folding chairs? If so, I still have some coupons left that I would be more than happy to give you – I’ll explain more about the coupons in a moment. Or does your family Thanksgiving look like something in between practically perfect and perniciously psychotic? If so, this AMEN Corner may be helpful...

I’ll never forget the year that we were trying to logistically plan things out for Thanksgiving dinner with our own extended family. For a few years, we had it at a person’s house who doesn’t cook and he orders Thanksgiving dinner from a restaurant. Kind of like an upscale Turkey Box Lunch. But that year he had a new girlfriend who wanted Thanksgiving at her house. She lived in a small house with a huge undisciplined dog and her own tradition was to invite eleven of her closest relatives and friends. Even though she was engaged to this member of our immediate family, we still didn’t make the cut and were not invited. Then the family matriarch intervened and her son’s fiancee extended a reluctant, last-minute invitation to us, but we were told that because the house was too small, we’d have to sit outside on a small patch of grass and dirt next to the dog house.

The second-tier guests like us were going to be confined in the tiny back yard with the 120 pound dog and I didn’t want to be wrestling with a Rottweiler over a turkey leg, so I was hoping that maybe we could just park in their driveway and they could serve us a Turkey Box Lunch in the car. At this point in the Thanksgiving planning, the tension increased pushing us even further away and so we rebelliously did something that we had never done before. We drove to Carpinteria and bought two turkey Subway Sandwiches. The sun-warmed beach was devoid of people and it was like being on a deserted island. It was Thanksgiving in paradise! We sat in the shade of a palm tree, enjoyed the fresh ocean breeze, ate our turkey sandwiches and the pumpkin scones I had made for dessert. It was the best and most meaningful Thanksgiving day that we’d ever had.

I’m obviously going to encourage you to spend Thanksgiving with your family, but I did get some Subway coupons in my mailbox last week so just let me know if you’d like to have them. (We’ll thankfully be with our family this year, so I won’t need to use them.) Family is important to us and God made us that way. We were created to be in relationship with those who God has given to us and to whom we have been given. We were created to live in a family relationship with others, but today’s families face a minefield of trigger topics where even the mildest remark about the weather can unleash a diatribe on climate change or a niece’s newborn baby boy can trigger a heated discussion about the child’s right to choose its own gender.

Last week HuffPost called for the elimination of Thanksgiving because of its environmental impact on climate change and an MSNBC host described Thanksgiving as a “problematic food holiday” while giving advice on how to mock and denigrate the character of any Trump supporters at the table. Many in our Nation have been indoctrinated to hate any person who does not conform to their political doctrine, but the media’s agenda to provoke our rage does not have to provide the context for our Thanksgiving family dinner. This is a season of thanksgiving! Time for us to thank God for the grace He has so lovingly given to us. Time to let that grace flow through us to others in our circle of family and friends. Time to see other people not through our own eyes but through God’s eyes. Thanksgiving should be a time of warmth, harmony and peace with family and friends, but in a fractious family, how do we do that?

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If the host/hostess knows there are those present who are outspoken and have strong beliefs about an issue, (see above wordcloud) they should announce that those discussions are not welcome and that the focus of the time together is on what everyone is thankful for. If conversations turn political anyway, then do what you can to avoid triggering discussions about today’s hot button issues while knowing that others may still use just the fragment of a conversation to transition to the issues they are feeling most passionate about. When that happens, simply don’t engage – just listen without replying. We foolishly think that we can change another person’s opinion by our persuasive arguments, and when we can’t, we may feel that rage building up until we become hostile, resort to verbal violence and say things that may potentially cause irreparable damage to a family relationship. But what if we’ve chosen to not engage and another person still becomes verbally combative: “So why don’t you hate Trump?” The best response may be a mild, “That’s not a conversation to have while we’re enjoying this day together, maybe we can talk about it later.” And if you’ve been mocked or belittled by another, immediately start to work on your forgiveness, remembering that one definition of forgiveness is “Simply no longer holding against a person what deserves to be held against them.”

On Thanksgiving day and everyday, we are  responsible for what comes from our own mouth. “The tongue has the power of life and death” Proverbs 18:21 meaning that our words can either speak life, or our words can speak death. It is not Christ-like for us to let rage build in us to the point that we damage or kill a relationship with a family member by the words we use. The words from our lips, pour out of our heart and form the image of how others see us. A friend recently told me about a message she had seen on a church sign: “If the words you spoke were written on your skin, would you still be beautiful?” This Thanksgiving, let’s make sure that our own words are kind and filled with the grace of God. “Kind words are like honey..sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.” Proverbs 16:24-26 NLT Amen?

Do You Need A Rescue List?

Dear Friends,

There’s a story of an old country parson who was always filled with the joy of the Lord and unrelentingly thankful even during the worst of circumstances. That Saturday an unexpectedly huge snow storm swept over their town and they awoke Sunday morning to downed trees, no electrical power and collapsed roofs. As a few hardy parishioners gathered in the church for Sunday services they grumbled out loud that there was certainly nothing for the good reverend to be thankful about that morning. “MERCIFUL FATHER!” bellowed the pastor, “WE COME INTO THY PRESENCE AND THANK THEE THAT NOT ALL DAYS ARE LIKE THIS ONE..!!”

We celebrate Thanksgiving day in November but as Christians, we have so much to be thankful for, one day is not enough for us.  We have a season of Lent to prepare us for Easter Sunday and a season of Advent to prepare us for Christmas Day. Perhaps we need a “season of thanksgiving” and maybe the season should start today and never come to an end. Because as Christian believers, everyday should be a day of thanksgiving. G.K. Chesterton said, “When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” And that's why the Apostle Paul said, “..in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”  1 Thessalonians 5:18 

As the country parson found, there is always something we can give thanks for even in the worst of storms. But how do we remain thankful for all things in the middle of our personal life-storms? We were talking with a good friend last week about how easy it is to pray, keep encouraged and have hope for our future when life is going well and how difficult that all is when we are down and discouraged. When our circumstances have plunged us into the pit of despair, it can seem like there’s nothing we can be thankful for now or ever again. We may find ourselves desperately searching for something good to hang on to, but positive thoughts are elusive and gratitude is beyond our grasp. And, that’s why we need a rescue list.

If my computer crashes, I have a “rescue disk” that I can use to reboot my computer and bring it back to life. If my day crashes, my “rescue list” will bring it back to life. I read those things which make me happy and a positive perspective will be restored; my thankfulness will be re-booted. I will be reminded of how good life really is and how much hope I have as a Christian believer. I am reminded that no matter what circumstances I find myself in at the moment, as the hymn goes: “All is well with my soul.” I’m sharing my list with you in the hope you will be inspired to make your own rescue list that will lift you out of the storms of life, fill your heart with gratitude to a gracious God and restore peace to your soul.

This list is very personal but I wanted you to see what I’m talking about. For the past six years it’s lived at the very front of my Bible so that I always know where it is and can quickly find it. These are just some of the things for which I am most thankful. Some may sound spiritual to you and some you may think are just plain silly, but they all bring a smile to my face when I read these.

I would encourage you to make your own “rescue list.” Make it personal and don’t worry if it’s serious or silly. Write down those things that you are most thankful for right now. What brings a smile to your face? What brings joy to your heart? Write those down; tuck the list in your Bible until you need it. The friend I mentioned has a sign in her kitchen that says, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” When your life turns sour, reflecting with gratitude upon the things in your list that bring joy to your life will be the sweetener for your “lemonade.”

Grace! It's What's Before Dinner.

Dear Friends,

When I was a kid, we said grace at every meal and our family tradition was for us to take turns. My mom and dad said the traditional prayers of the Episcopal Church that were found in the back of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and my dad would solemnly intone: “Bless O Lord, thy gifts to our use; And us to thy loving service; And make us ever mindful of the needs of others; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”  

While I would like you to think that I was a deeply spiritual lad, the truth is that in my haste to eat, my prayer was a fast, three second one-word ritual: 

“GodisGreatandGodisGoodandweThankHimforthisFood!”

My sister’s grace was “Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub! Yay! God!” which was definitely not found in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.

Saying grace before the meal was so important to my family that on Thanksgiving and Christmas they even called in a professional. Well, sort of.. My mom's cousin was a Congregational Church minister so when their family came to dinner, he always became the designated “pray-er.” His church was the oldest (founded in 1867), largest Protestant church in Los Angeles and I looked up to and admired this man of God. He didn’t just say grace. He would incorporate a three-point sermon into a Thanksgiving prayer with words of thanks for everything and a word of blessing for everyone. By the time he was finished, the turkey had grown cold, a fatty layer had congealed on the now-chilled gravy and his own children would be looking at each other and sneaking glances at the dining room clock. But when you said “amen,” the meal had been sanctified and so had the family time. Our dining room had become a church and God had been invited to join us at the table. 

Giving a blessing after a meal comes from Jewish Law: “When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you.” Deuteronomy 8:10 But in the New Testament, we find Jesus giving thanks to God before the meal. “And when He had taken the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to His disciples...” Mark 6:41 And then when Jesus met the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, “Now it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.” Luke 24:30 Jesus’ prayer of thanks to the Father before meals became a Christian liturgy taught by His disciples and we read, “And when he (Paul) had said these things, he took bread and gave thanks to God in the presence of them all; and when he had broken it he began to eat.” Acts 27:35

Saying grace is the spiritual time-out between the flurry of activity before the meal and the meal itself. It's the quiet moment at home when the food has been brought to the table. It's the moment at the restaurant when the waiter has hustled off to fetch ketchup for the fries. We pause and bow our heads in prayer. We ask God to bless and sanctify our meal in remembrance that all that we have, including all that we eat, is from God, and we are thankful to Him for His good and perfect gifts to us. James 1:17 

It's also the pause to remember that our meals are not magically transported to our plate after being created in the "StarTrek Replicator." Someone grew, raised or caught your food. If you are eating vegetables, someone spent all day bent over at the waist in the hot sun to handpick them for you. In the grocery store, a minimum-wage produce clerk carefully arranged those veggies on the chilled shelves and perhaps someone other than yourself prepared and cooked your meal. We are thankful for them. And as we sit down to an abundant meal, we are also mindful that according to Christian agencies, 925 million people in the world will go to bed tonight still hungry. We pray for them. Perhaps we even pray for God to show us how we can help someone in need.

If you don't normally say grace, start a new tradition in your life and express your gratitude to a gracious God before your meals. Extemporaneous prayers from the heart are wonderful and so are the timeless traditional prayers. You just read the Episcopal prayer in the first paragraph and a traditional Catholic prayer is “Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ, our Lord.” Methodists pray, “Be present at our table Lord. Be here and everywhere adored. These mercies bless and grant that we may feast in fellowship with Thee.” A beautiful Eastern Orthodox prayer is “O Christ God, bless the food and drink of Thy servants, for holy art Thou, always, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.” A traditional Lutheran prayer is “Come, Lord Jesus, be our Guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed.” (Unless you’re a youth pastor at a Baptist Bible Camp you may not want to pray my sister’s prayer and I know you can do better than my childhood grace!) But no matter how and what you pray, this Thanksgiving make sure someone says grace before you tuck into that plate of turkey because “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31

The First American Christian Holiday

Dear Friends,

I had read about a Washington D.C. politician who was vilifying the church and Christians because we don’t like the secular direction in which our Nation is going. He said, “If Christians don’t like it here, they can just go start their own country..”  Well..  Actually.. we already did that.. It’s called America.

It was November in 1620 when the Christian Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. 102 people had set sail for the New World from England on the Mayflower. Four died during the rough journey, and after landing, another 45 died during an unexpected bitterly harsh winter.

One year later in November 1621, the fifty-three survivors (including 14 teenagers and 13 small children) declared a Day of Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims (Puritans) were the English Protestant Reformers who had always set aside special days of worship and prayer and those Christian practices had not changed in the move to America. When the Pilgrims landed in this strange wilderness, they immediately struck up a friendship with the Indians who taught them how to plant and harvest corn. These Native Americans showed the Pilgrim men how to fish and how to hunt the wild turkeys. In return, the Pilgrims gave them tools and showed them how to use them. So when the Pilgrims declared a three day feast of worship, prayer and giving thanks to God, they celebrated their blessings with their new Indian friends. Ninety Wampanoag Indians brought five freshly-killed deer to the “church potluck” and joined the fifty-three Pilgrims for this Nation’s first Thanksgiving feast. 

These first settlers celebrated many more feast days of thanksgiving by acknowledging the Lord God as their Sovereign Provider thus providing a spiritual principle which has undergirded the foundation of our Nation. John Adams was the 2nd U.S. President and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, Adams described the principles upon which our Country was founded and the Declaration of Independence was written: "The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved independence, were the.. general Principles of Christianity, in which all these Sects were United. Now I will avow, that I then believe, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System."

And by the time the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, Thanksgiving had been celebrated in America for over 150 years! From these first days in our Nation's history, days of thanksgiving were also periodically called by government leaders. And a yearly holy day (holiday) was established by a Presidential Proclamation in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November, “..as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.” Congress later changed this day of celebration to the fourth Thursday in November.  

Thanksgiving is more than just food and football! It has always been, a uniquely American Christian holiday! We join in this wonderful tradition set forth by our Nation's Christian forefathers as we celebrate the majesty of God, giving Him praise and thanksgiving! 

"Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever... Oh, that men would give thanks to the LORD for His goodness, and for His wonderful works...”  Psalm 107:1,8

(note: some of the above content has appeared in earlier AMEN Corners.)

Thanks God!

Dear Friends,

Those of you who know me may have noticed the scar. About an inch long, it runs vertically through my eyebrow and down to the very top of my right eye. It’s where I was hit in the face with the sharp edge of a shovel when I was six years old. If the point of the shovel had been ½ inch lower it would have been embedded in my eye. If you hadn’t noticed the scar, I don’t either. In fact, for the longest time, I’d forgotten it was there. Then one Thanksgiving morning, a couple of years ago, I looked in the bathroom mirror and saw that old scar as if for the first time. At that moment, I realized that I had never thanked God for saving my sight and began wondering what else I’d never thanked Him for. I thought of when I was young man and engaged to the hot-blooded Sicilian girl who broke our engagement by trying to kill me with a butcher knife. I realized that I had never thanked God for saving me from a marriage to her.

And then like a slide show, face after face from my past appeared in my mind and I realized that I’d never thanked God for Father Barnes, the rector at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, who believed that I needed to start serving God as an acolyte when I was only nine and who started me on the path to God that I am still on today. Many other faces came to mind and I thanked God for them. I still do. And perhaps you are now remembering your own scars. The times God bailed you of a bad circumstance. Perhaps like the country song “Thank God For Unanswered Prayers,” God didn’t give you what you’d prayed for and gave you something better. Do you see the faces of people you’ve never thanked God for?

Every Thanksgiving, I think of an Episcopal priest named Father Tim. He was a fictional character in a series of books written by Christian author Jan Karon about life in a small town called Mitford. And in one story, Father Tim wondered: What if God took away from him everything that he had not thanked God for?

That’s something to just stop and think about. What if God did take away from us everything we had not been thankful for. Would I have my right eye? For sixty years I had never thanked God for saving it from the blade of that shovel! What if everything God gave you, that you never thanked Him for, disappeared in a flash? What would you have left in your house? Would you even have a house? What would you have left in your life? Would you still have your health? Your hearing? Would you still have your Bible? How about your clothes? Would you still have the unique personality that God has gifted you with? If God deleted what you never thanked Him for, would you instantly become as dumb as a rock as your intelligence vanished into thin air? Would you still have your sense of humor? 

Would you still have the ability to discern right from wrong? Would you still have your salvation? Would you still have your love for God? Have you ever thanked God for those things? Maybe even more importantly than what you would have left in your life is who you would have left. If God took away every one you had never thanked Him for, would you still have all your family? Your friends? The people at your church? Would you still have your dog? Your cat?

When I realized that if I thanked God for everything He has ever given me.. Everything He has done for me.. For every meal I have ever eaten.. For everyone He has sent to bless my life.. Every time He healed me.. Every time He protected me from illness..injury..death.. Every time He protected me from my foolish decisions and actions.. I realized that if I thanked Him for everything He had ever done for me, I’d be thanking Him unceasingly from now until the end of time. And in that “ah-hah” moment, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 immediately came to mind: Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

But how about those circumstances when it just seems like it’s impossible to be thankful. Because let’s face it. We don’t just cruise through this life on easy street. The truth is that Jesus said: “In the world you will have tribulation..” and I think that all of us can say “yes and amen” to that. But then we rejoice as Jesus goes on to say, “..but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.” John 16:33 All of us have experienced immense pain and grief in our past. And, here we are today with thankful hearts praising the Lord. How did we get through the trials and tribulations we’ve experienced so far? Because God is always right there in the midst of the worst thing that can ever happen to you.

We can only be truly thankful when our thankfulness is no longer a condition of our circumstances. We are not thanking Him for all things. The scripture says we thank Him in all things because no matter what our circumstances, there is always something for which we can be thankful. And then when we are thankful in all things we find ourselves rejoicing always. And, when we rejoice always, we find ourselves being thankful in all things. 

So let’s start this Thanksgiving season by asking God to show us all the things that we never thanked him for. Give thanks to God for all that He has given you and done for you. Give thanks even in the tribulations. And in the coming week, let your loved ones know how grateful you are to God and show them that Thanksgiving is not about a turkey dinner. It’s about our thankfulness to God. Amen?

Secret To Greater Happiness

Dear Friends,

Cleo’s birthday was last Friday and that morning I went to visit her at the assisted living home and pray with her. If you met this wonderful woman of God who is so vital, lively and full of life, you would be shocked to find out how old she really is. Cleo just turned 105 years old. For two years now, we have held a church service at this assisted living home and she has not missed a single service. She parks her wheelchair in the front row directly in front of me and everyone knows that’s Cleo’s “reserved” space! Church is what she looks forward to all week long. On Wednesday mornings she makes sure she is dressed in her “finest clothes” and her hair is fixed just right. She’s going to church! The residents know that Cleo is the person to go to if they need to talk to someone, have a question about God or need prayer. She is the oldest person I have ever known and she’s the happiest person I have ever known. That’s no coincidence. When people ask her what the secret is to her long life or when people ask her how she can be so filled with joy all the time, she will give them the same answer to either question. She will tell you the answer is that she is grateful to God, for everything, all of the time.

One of the most troubling scriptures is, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Troubling because it seems as if God is telling us to do the impossible. Rejoice always? Pray constantly? Give thanks in every thing? Impossible we say! But God never asks us to do the impossible and Jesus reminded His followers that in the Kingdom of God: “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.” Matthew 19:26 And for us pessimistic naysayers who pin the word “impossible” on God’s commandments for us like a badge of defeat, we would only have to look at the radiant smile on Cleo’s face to see that with God, it really is possible to rejoice always!

Much of our unhappiness comes from stress and anxiety that is created by circumstances outside our control. Our emotions are engaged. We are angry, sad, fearful. Just in these last few weeks: huge raging wildfires in the western states, devastating floods in Houston, massive destruction in Florida, hate and political violence rocking America, an earthquake in Mexico and the expert’s rush to assure us in Los Angeles that our own big 9 point earthquake is surely on its way. All this and fears of a nuclear attack from North Korea and God says to rejoice always? Yes! Because in the middle of the worst and most fearsome circumstances, when we know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, all is well with our soul. 

But we still may have no internal peace if we live with one foot in the sacred and one foot in the secular. Of course we’ll be unhappy, fearful and stressed during our week if our only time in the presence of God is for an hour and a half on a Sunday morning. That’s why God says we are not to rejoice just on Sunday morning, we are to “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!” Philippians 4:4 And here’s how to do that: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7 Do you want to “rejoice always”? Then we need to pray “without ceasing” and give our cares and worries to God.

Do you want to “rejoice always”? Then like Cleo, “in everything give thanks.” We don’t give thanks for everything. We don’t thank God for that devastating diagnosis we just received from our doctor. We don’t give thanks for earthquakes, fires and floods, but the word of God tells us that “in everything give thanks.” In the worst circumstances, there is always something for which we can be thankful to God. The morning after hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New Jersey in 2012, a woman was interviewed on camera by a news reporter. As she looked at her flooded house and ruined possessions she said, “We were blessed. It could have been worse.” 

Did you know that the word of God and medical science agree on how we can have greater health and more happiness in our life? According to the Harvard School of Medicine, being thankful is one of the simplest ways to feel better. According to the Harvard Medical newsletter: “The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means gratefulness. Gratitude is a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives. In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness.”

Cleo shows us that when we are constantly grateful to God and are thankful in all things, we will find ourselves rejoicing always. Do you want to feel better than you do? Do you want to be happier and healthier? Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in all things give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.  Amen?