Being Thankful

“I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart; I will tell of all Your wonders.

I will be glad and exult in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.”

(rf. Ps. 9:1-2)

The falling of the leaves and the colorful palette created during this harvest time of year reminds us that the holiday of Thanksgiving is quickly approaching. Quite unlike the noted event of the previous month which has no redeeming qualities to speak of with its centrality on dark and evil themes, the celebration of Thanksgiving forces us to stop and take inventory of our own blessings. For but a moment, our eyes are moved away from ourselves and on to those around us as we prepare to join with family and friends in feasting and simply enjoying the company of those we love so dear. And if we do know the Lord personally, we are given this special opportunity to give Him thanks for the many ways He has uniquely touched us and shown us His grace throughout the previous year. Indeed, we even have this “open window” to disclose to others who may not have this special relationship with God that He is the One who is the giver of all “good gifts” (rf. Mt. 7:11; Jas. 1:17).

Speaking of gifts for which we are thankful, my family and I praise the Lord for our being joined with the ministry of St. John’s. We know the Lord had this connection in mind all along. Even when He laid it on our hearts to begin preparations to leave our former ministry back in the latter months of 2015, He knew, though we did not, that He would send us here to serve you. Though we believed that our directive to resign my previous pastorate would come as early as January of this year, it did not because the Lord had yet one more mission for me and my family to carry out for Him. On February 24^th, an EF-3 tornado struck the Evergreen community outside our front door, damaging or destroying almost 200 homes in a 17-mile swath of Appomattox County, with most of the destruction taking place within walking distance of our parsonage. Our church became “ground-zero” for the federal, state and local emergency governmental response teams as well as the many non-profit organizations that came to assist. We headed up the relief and recovery efforts for our area for the next three months. Only until those ministries came to a close did the Lord come to us with His clear directive that it was our time to depart.

After spending the next month packing up our belongings and saying our “goodbyes” to good friends and to a ministry cultivated over the last fifteen years, we left our stuff in storage and began a three-month pilgrimage to find the next place of service for us in God’s plan. We stayed in cottages provided by friends of ours in Virginia, giving us opportunity to seek the Lord continuously, to minister to family, and for me to supply the pulpit of other churches as needed. Not until we had physically departed from Evergreen were we initially contacted by the search committee at St. John’s. When we met with the committee for an interview, we felt the leadership of God’s Spirit bringing us together. There was no question in our hearts that this was where He was directing us to come. From then, it was just a matter of Him working out all of the details. And, thus, He has accomplished everything to bring us all to the present in making this new ministry His reality. For all of this, the Lord truly is deserving of all the praise and glory. We never could have engineered such an outcome.

As you approach your own celebration of Thanksgiving, take a few moments and look over the past year to find the things in your life for which you can give thanks and praise to God for His blessings. Admittedly, not all things for which we can be thankful are positive. Like Job, if we have the right perspective and God’s heart toward us in mind, we can join with him in saying, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (rf. Job 1:21). The point is that our God is worthy to be praised at all times, not just at Thanksgiving. But the celebration of Thanksgiving is an excellent opportunity to remind ourselves and others of our need to thank Him!