Counting Grace, Finding Joy, Sharing Love

I remember a story that I heard about five people who froze to death around a campfire on a particularly cold night.  The fire was dying out and each of them had a stick of wood which they can put in to keep the fire going.  However, all of them refused to give what they had.  The woman would not give her stick of wood because there was a man in the circle.  The homeless man did not give his because there was a rich man there.  The rich man did not offer his stick because it would have warmed someone who he thought was lazy and undeserving.  The Christian did not contribute his stick of wood because he saw a Muslim in the group.  And the African American clung onto his piece of wood to get even with the white people present.  The fire eventually died out and all of them froze to death holding onto to their sticks of wood that could have saved them.  “They did not die from the cold outside, but the cold from within” is how the story ended. 

I like to remember Thanksgiving as a reason so that we won’t all freeze to death.  It is the reason to enkindle that fire to warm our frozen hearts and be thankful for our sticks of wood. 

There is always something that we can be thankful for and sometimes it takes a specific holiday or time of the year to remind us that.  It often seems easier to come up with a list of our needs and desires than a list of things which we are grateful for.  Thanksgiving Day helps us express our thanks and blessings that we have received over the past year.  It reminds us that all that we have are not so much of our merits, but a free and generous gift from God who gave us the gift of life itself.  That is why to be truly people of thanksgiving, we have to know how to use our blessings and extend the grace we receive onto others.  Selfishness and ingratitude are not necessarily opposites of thanksgiving, greed is.  The need to have more, the need for self-interest, and the need to satisfy the feeling of never having enough.  When greed takes over, we become people who are too busy looking for more.  We clutch tightly onto our possessions, but in reality, they are holding onto us.  They have possession of us.  We don’t have time to enjoy those gifts let alone share them with others.  So to be a people of thanksgiving, we must be able to count our grace, find joy in them, and share them lovingly with open hands.

May God’s grace find us and our families this Thanksgiving.  And may our world become a joyful, warm and thankful place for all to feel welcome in.  Amen.