Thankful Thursday, Week 4

This is it: Thanksgiving Day! I hope you are all enjoying food and fellowship with family and friends today, and—most importantly—giving thanks with grateful hearts. (Unless you are Canadian, of course, and celebrated Thanksgiving in October.) Check out my previous weeks’ thankful posts here, here, and here, and Cindy’s Gratitude Project.

From President Lincoln’s Proclamation of Thanksgiving, October 3, 1863 (right in the middle of The Civil War):

“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.”

Day 19: Lessons learned through hardship
I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed hardship and pain, and maybe even if said I enjoyed the lessons learned through the trials. But I can choose to be thankful for those lessons learned the hard way as I know they are good and necessary in my life.

Day 20: Answered prayers
This one needs no explanation, right? I rejoice when God answers my prayers with a “yes!” especially if it’s something I’ve been praying about for any extended amount of time. And I remind myself to rejoice that God hears the prayers of this sinful, unworthy soul even when He doesn’t give the answer I’m looking for.

Day 21: Nature
Today is abnormally warm for late November—so warm that we ate lunch outside on the patio and basked in the sunshine. There is beauty in every season, in daytime and nighttime, in the midst of the storm and the calm before and after. We serve a big God, and nature speaks volumes to that fact.

Day 22: Blogging friends
I love learning about and from people who have a different perspective on life than my own. As I go through my daily routine, I don’t meet very many new people. Blogging has introduced me to all kinds of interesting people I would not have met otherwise. I’m also thankful for this medium as a way to keep up with real-life friends who are now geographically distant.

Day 23: Simple joys
…like waking up without an alarm clock, hot showers, and warm mugs of fragrant tea. I attempt to focus on simple joys such as these with my Five-Senses Friday posts (which have been sadly lacking the past couple of weeks). There is much joy to be found in the simple, small pleasures of life.

Day 24: Thanksgiving Day itself
It’s easy to take Thanksgiving itself for granted, to treat it as just another holiday that promises time off work, lots of food, and football on TV. But really, how great is it that we have a national holiday set aside to give thanks to God for his many and abundant blessings?

Day 25: Another year filled with blessings
The 365 days that have come and gone between last Thanksgiving and this have been a gift and a blessing. While that’s not to say I haven’t shed tears over hardships and trails in my own life and the lives of others, I can honestly look back with praise to the One who gave me those days to live in the first place. What a gift!