If we can learn to savour the gifts of life, if we can learn to see what life truly is, the goodness that it brings us, that savouring of the gifts of life enables us to accept its tribulations, its difficulties, its problems and suffering. This is what we learn gently, slowly day by day, as we meditate.
From: Laurence Freeman, Aspects of Love
Be thankful and repay
Growth with good work and care.
Work done in gratitude,
Kindly, and well, is prayer.
You did not make yourself,
Yet you must keep yourself
By use of other lives.
No gratitude atones
For bad use or too much.
From- Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997
“The person who has stopped being thankful has fallen asleep in life.”
From: – Robert Louis Stevenson
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
From – Albert Schweitzer
(Go to Discipleswalk.org for a question or two in “light” of Schweitzer’s remark.)
“Thanksgiving is the language of heaven, and we had better start to learn it if we are not to be mere dumb aliens there.”
From:A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), The Galilean Accent, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1926, p. 181
“…give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” – 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (NIV)
When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God hath done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your many blessings, every doubt will fly,
And you will keep singing as the days go by.
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God hath done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
When you look at others with their lands and gold,
Think that Christ has promised you His wealth untold;
Count your many blessings. Wealth can never buy
Your reward in heaven, nor your home on high.
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God hath done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
So, amid the conflict whether great or small,
Do not be disheartened, God is over all;
Count your many blessings, angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God hath done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
Words: Johnson Oatman, Jr., in Songs for Young People, by Edwin Excell (Chicago, Illinois: 1897)
Music: Edwin O. Excell
Several years ago I was fortunate to hear a pastor speak of how important Thanksgiving Day was for him. He went on to say that he found it good to prepare for Thanksgiving Day by a season of thankfulness, an Advent of Thanksgiving if you will, and for the weeks before Thanksgiving Day he helped us focus our attention on thankfulness and gratitude.
I would like to offer us the same opportunity this year by giving space here each day to think for at least a moment about thankfulness.
I will begin today with the posting of the well known hymn “Count Your Blessings” and offer each day this month a Scripture, or quotation, or hymn, or link, or thought that I hope nurtures a spirit of gratitude.
I invite you to make the journey with me. All the posts will be tagged “Thanksgiving 2014.”
Charles
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}
“In one sense we are always traveling, and traveling as if we did not know where we were going. In another sense we have already arrived. We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are traveling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore, in that sense, we have arrived and are dwelling in the light. But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!”
~~~ Thomas Merton in The Seven Storey Mountain
“Daily, quiet reflection on the word of God as it applies to me… becomes for one a point of crystallization for everything which gives interior and exterior order to my life.”
~~~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Meditating on the Word
“Steadfastness in believing doth not exclude all temptations from without. When we say a tree is firmly rooted, we do not say the wind never blows upon it.”
~ ~ ~ John Owen