For Whom Are You THANKFUL?
Always, God is number one. We love him because he first loved us, giving his only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, for our sin. All who receive him by faith become the sons and daughters of God through Christ’s name. But, on earth, for whom are you truly thankful this Thanksgiving season?
My parents come to my mind. I am thankful for my Dad and for my Mom. I only have early memories of her. Her name was Helen. She died while I was young. They divorced, not for infidelity. They had a major disagreement. Mom was the oldest of her siblings. Her mother died giving birth the youngest. She became the stand-in for her mother to those kids.
At the time Dad married her, her father had a stroke. He moved in and became the bread-winner for a large family at 17. After I was born, Dad made plans for us to have our own home, figuring that her siblings were old enough to care for themselves. She could not bring herself to leave them until the last had moved on. They separated.
After Mom died, Dad remarried. The lady he married, Kay, knew that Dad had the two youngest children of four still at home, my sister Carol and myself. She had determined to care for us. I remember the day Dad pulled up across the street from the old house. We were on the porch. He got out, opened the back door to the car. Looked at us. We walked down those steps, crossed the street and got into the car. We took nothing with us but the clothes on our back. Dad and Kay provided everything.
When I speak of Mother, I speak mostly of Kay. She whatever she could be for us. Though waters were rough at times, I can truly say that God has provided me with two women, precious to my heart, that I gladly call, Mother.
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…John Donne penned those words in his “Meditation 17” on death: If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
God’s Spirit had the Apostle Paul write the same sentiment may years before Donne: For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living (Romans 14:7-9). Have you acknowledged who Christ is and believed upon his name?