[From the Archives]
Happy Thanksgiving, y’all! If you’re in the USA, it’s a big day. Lots of food (all favorites you expect/hope to see every year) with those you love crowded around. Then football. Falling asleep from all the turkey. Forever grateful – times together and times apart…love and good memories holding us together.
Dave’s family is in Delaware and most of mine is in Georgia. We’ve had Thanksgivings with both, on sort of a rotation…but not nearly often enough, since we lived overseas for so many years. During that season of our lives, friends became family for us.
The food favorites varied somewhat depending on the family, gathering together that year. What are your “must-haves” on Thanksgiving Day?
The best thing about Thanksgiving is the time together with people we love. We can’t always be all together because of distance or work schedules…but it is a good day spent together…I’m grateful for every memory we’ve made together. So thankful for family – with all its craziness. God put us together, and I ‘m so grateful He did.
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. – Albert Schweitzer
If one should give me a dish of sand and tell me there were particles of iron in it, I might look for them with my eyes, and search for them with my clumsy fingers, and be unable to detect them; but let me take a magnet and sweep through it, and how would it draw to itself the almost invisible particles by the mere power of attraction. The unthankful heart, like my finger in the sand, discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day, and as the magnet finds iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessing, only the iron in God’s sand is gold. Henry Ward Beecher
Football!
Football! 
[Sidebar about football and the mad cleanup that follows the huge Thanksgiving meal – this commercial.]
I cherish every memory these images represent and all the other memories not documented here. Thank You, God, for all Your good gifts to us. Your kindness is beyond our imagining.
“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” – Romans 11:36
Look for things to be thankful for: a dear old face at an open door,
The table set for the family meal, a husband’s love that is true as steel.
A cushioned chair that you fixed yourself, your favorite books on a nearby shelf,
A green-hued twilight that sort of glows, the clean, fresh smell of a brier rose.
An old windjammer that you recall beating its way through an April squall,
Its old sides crusted with salty spray, limping in at the close of day.
The lovely odor of lemon peel; a humble man with a flaming zeal
For a worthy cause that he thinks is right; the feeling of warmth on a winter night.
Look for things to be thankful for: a braided rug on your bedroom floor,
A dormer window with curtains drawn, a bluebird singing across the lawn.
So much to be thankful for these days, so much to enjoy and love and praise. – Edna Jaques, Ideals, Vol. 57, #5
For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that He has vouchsafed me knowledge of His works; deep thanks that He has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep, deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to – a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song. – Helen Adams Keller
Prayers for those family members missing from the table because of work or other commitments (I think of those in the military and other service jobs). Prayers also for those of you who have said goodbye, for now, to loved ones this year… God’s peace be with you.
Worship Wednesday – All Good Gifts – Thanksgiving Memories – DebMillsWriter
Loved looking at your family photos. Loved the Keller quote. So much to be thankful for.
So much to be thankful for…hope to see you when you are back in the US.
Love the family photos! For a family of no children from my siblings or from me, I love to see others’ children/grandchildren in photos! I would have loved some of my own.
My brother and I had a quiet Thanksgiving lunch at a restaurant today. It was special…my brother is my family. I love that God loves families no matter the size.
He is with us.
Oh Lisa…I’m glad you and your brother dined together…this was our first Thanksgiving without any of our kids so we did miss them. I would have loved for you to have some of your own…. Love you, Friend. Happy Thanksgiving weekend!