Thanksgiving Day!

Many happy wishes for you and yours this day. It is a time we Americans set aside to give thanks for all our blessings. Whether you are religious or not, your life contains many good things, things you did not directly make or provide. Others did that. Other circumstances were fortuitous in your favor. This is your life of blessings received and enjoyed.

So many do not have these things. They have much less, or problems of the opposite nature and severity. They are sick and dying, or depressed and miserable, or poor and hungry. They may live their lives in fear and dread from a significant other, a loved one, family member or neighbor. Or government and its agencies. Or just a nasty criminal or band of same.

We have food, shelter, health, clothing and each other. We have family true or fashioned from available parts! We have community – neighborhood, town, city, county and state. We have workmates and fellow church members. We have education, interest groups and hobbies.

We have a lot. We often don’t give this fact much credit. Rather we focus on what’s wrong, what’s missing, or the stunning reality that we don’t control our lives as much as we had hoped to.

Accepting the reality of our situation is one blessing we need to learn to develop.

Doing that is not easy. One way, however, is to leave the comfort of home and gather with others who are in need. Reach out to them, learn their needs, and work to address at least one of them. Is it hunger? Find a way to get food to them: buy it and deliver it; collect food donations or cash to buy more, then deliver it to the people in need; join a group packaging meals for kids, families or homebound elderly and schedule time for yourself and family members to share the experience. Another way is to join a soup kitchen organization and help prepare and serve the food to those visiting the facility daily.

If it is clothing people need, there are charities that focus on this function. Find out their location and hours of operation and ask how you can help them.

The same is true for shelter. All kinds of housing – permanent, temporary, emergency, and what not. So many causes; so many responses possible; so many in need.

In fact, it is coming face to face with the needs of others that we become educated on broader issues. In time we learn, too, that our own problems melt away in comparison. And that’s the point of being the cause of thanks to someone else. Be involved in helping others and you help yourself. And your kids and family members will learn a valuable lesson, too.

The next lesson in this process is simple: give thanks each day. Make someone else’s life better every day, too. Thanks should be year-round. We live with our own bounty without knowing it fully. So we should be thankful each and every day.

Funny. We were taught this as kids. But now as adults…

November 23, 2017