THANKSGIVING: The Day After

Well, hello again, this is Dick Foth with stories from the road. Thanksgiving the day after, day after could be gladness or it's like you, we might have attended toward gluttony, it could be groaning. I do have to say this, there's something right about a cold slice of apple or pumpkin pie the day after. Just put it out there. Listen to how Psalmist 3000 years ago wrote and sung this song, it's called Psalm 100. This is how it reads, shout for joy to the Lord all the earth worship the Lord with gladness, come before him with joyful songs, know that the Lord is God, it is he who made us and we are his, we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with Thanksgiving and his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name. The Gates idea of course would be gates around the temple in Jerusalem or maybe the gates of the city, but enter his gates with Thanksgiving and his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name for the Lord is good and his love and yours forever, his faithfulness continues through all generations. So a couple of words that we use to capture a glad heart and one word is grateful, the other is thankful. They're often used as synonyms, meaning the same thing. I would say there might be a slight difference, at least in my mind there are. Grateful is an attitude, it's a baseline, it's a context or a petri dish out of which other things come. Grateful is an attitude, thankful is an action. Let me just talk about gratefulness for a moment. I think gratefulness is a choice, I don't have to be grateful, but there's something about being around grateful people that is almost magnetic. People say I just want to be happy, here's a thought. If you want to be happy, be grateful. Somebody says I just want to have a long and rich life. If you want to have a long and rich life with physical, emotional, spiritual health, be grateful. A grateful heart is never disappointed. It's very interesting to me that in any 12-step program or a rehab or recovery program, folks are almost always encouraged to keep a journal at the end of the day. You write down three things for which one is grateful. I think gratitude and gratefulness come out of how we see how we see how we see makes us grateful. For example, the created order, oftentimes Ruth, my wife will look at a sunset here in Colorado where you have pinks and greens and blues and purples and magenta and indigo all look like they're all clustered together and Ruth often says, well how does God do that? How does he put those colors together? I like how Elizabeth Barrett Browning back in the day spoke to it. This is how she said it in terms of singing, Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush a fire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries. How we see how we see the people who have left positive fingerprints on our souls, or how we see those moments where insights come, or how we see and retain a moment of wonder. We have some kids who gave us a gift sometime back it's a picture frame that sits on our mantel piece it's electronic and it's you know it's that fancy cyberspace stuff and it has scrolling picture streaming pictures than any of our family and they are doing this any of our family can send pictures to that particular location or website and it adds them so we could get five or six pictures in a day from one family or the other and so we're sitting in our front room we could be talking we could be reading we could be watching TV but that but that picture frame up on the mantel that ate by 10 the pictures keep changing every minute or half minute and all we say to each other now is mantle and we'll look up there and there's a new picture and oftentimes it'll be of grandchildren or great grandchildren of which we have five and the joy that it brings just to see that it makes us grateful that's just how it is I'd like to suggest on this day after Thanksgiving that you think of someone for whom you are grateful it could be someone for a moment in time back years ago that touched your life or made a difference or changed how you thought about yourself or the world or God himself whatever it is why did you pick up the phone and just give them a call or if you don't have a phone number but you have an email send them a note and let them know wouldn't it be great if in this coming year we would be known as that person who when somebody says what is that person like the response would be well they they're always grateful well that's it I'm grateful for you will catch you in a few more days and I'm just tickled if I can put it that way my mom used to use that word I'm just tickled to be able to be with you and every now and again some folks will respond thanks for subscribing dick-foath with stories from the road signing off God bless