Friday, September 28, 2012

October Thanksgiving



Thanksgiving in October

I've thought a lot about death lately and about hearts. This past week I found out mine is strong, free of blockages. After a heart attack scare this means much. I bow and give thanks to Christ.
 
Even before hearing the test results I decided when my time on earth ends I want to die giving thanks to God– with words of gratitude spilling from my lips and thoughts seeping from my heart.


I realize thank you has many forms. Ordinary thanksgivings to God the great giver for His endless giving though creation.  For items like carrots and flowers, now whose going to make one without having a seed first? And emotional realizations and re-creations, too. Yeah, God! You did it again. You let me be figuratively nailed to a cross, then set me free and even rose me up.

My deep thanks cut to the core when I observe real, recognizable events no man orchestrated and I know, just know for sure, the action was God’s. I soar with inexpressible joy. And His signs are ever present if one but looks.

Thanksgiving is humbling. How I appreciate the privilege of being helpful however minutely in someone else’s life. You used me, me? To speak a word of your truth into another person, to thrust a spear into debilitating deception or ignite a dead soul with new life. How privileged to be used to minister to one of God’s beloveds, which is what every human is after all.

Family and friends, what joy! What wild, amazing, God-designed flowers each one is in the garden of my life.

My praise overflows to live in a place I love. I watch rays of the sun shoot from the splendor of God to penetrate the forest. My husband and I share a road with wild turkeys who strut over it as if they paid for it to be paved. Deer lope and lounge in our yard devouring hostas until they’re stumps. Their grace and beauty more than compensates for their culinary indulgence of our landscaping.
 
Love has given me exquisite moments and deep agonies – who ever thought hearts could hurt so bad?  But then comes the wave of peace again, even joy.

Gratitude shocks me at times –surging like a summer storm through my head. I watch with awe God’s power splitting the atoms and making all circumstances good in His way and time.









Whose fish is bigger?
 


John 6:14 "Then those men, when they had seen the sign that Jesus did said, "This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world."