Clay in the Hands

Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving.  I trust you had a time of fellowship with family and friends and that you ate your fair share of turkey, ham, dressing and all the other things that follow this tradition.  I also hope you had time to think on those things for which you are thankful.

Each day, I receive an email from The Writer’s Almanac which contains a daily poem.  The poems aren’t normally religious in nature but I just like poetry.  Last Thursday the email was a copy of Psalm 100.  I was impressed that The Writer’s Almanac would send out something from the Bible as the poem of the day.  As I read on through the email, they also included several Thanksgiving Day stories.  This one really caused me to think.

On November 30, 1905, Thanksgiving Day, Mark Twain turned 70. He wrote: “Every year every person in America concentrates all his thought upon one thing, the cataloguing of his reasons for being thankful to the Deity for the blessings conferred upon him and upon the human race during the expiring twelve months. This is well and as it should be; but it is too one-sided. No one ever seems to think of the Deity’s side of it; apparently no one concerns himself to inquire how much or how little He has had to be thankful for during the same period; apparently no one has had good feeling enough to wish He might have a Thanksgiving day too. There is nothing right about this. Do you suppose everything has gone to His satisfaction during the year? Do you believe He is as sweepingly thankful as our nation is going to be, as indicated by the enthusiasms which will appear in the papers on the 30th of this month from the pens of the distinguished persons appointed to phrase its thankfulness on that day?”

I have two questions for us today.  The first is this:  What have you done this past year that would give God a reason to be thankful?

The second question is this:  What will you do this next year to make God thankful?

Be a blessing today!