11/25/2025
To offer thanksgiving grounded in love and faith does at least three things:
1: IT CHANGES HOW YOU EXPERIENCE THE WORLD. Being willing to smile even through the tears is a powerful act of defiance against hopelessness. Noticing light makes a next right step easier and lessens the burden of stumbling in the dark. Allowing a touch of joy and the joy of being touched smooths the path for grace to be experienced.
2: IT CHANGES HOW OTHER PEOPLE EXPERIENCE YOU. To rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, and be glad for the company, is to be humble, holy, and open. To honor people's intentions and be thankful that they care, even if their methods are not yours, makes it hard to fight and easier to build a better tomorrow.
3: IT CHANGES THE WORLD. Thankful people are resilient people, not easily recruited to cruelty. Thankful people are open people, able to connect with others about beautiful and true things. Thankful people are powerful people who "bear witness against the artifice and deceptions of the darkness that would blind this world to hope." Thankful people grounded in love and faith "strike a great hammer blow against the brittle night, shattering the gloom, reawakening our hearts, stirring our imaginations, focusing our vision on the kindom of heaven that is to come, on the kindom that is promised, on the kindom that is already, indeed, among us. For the resurrection of all good things has already joyfully begun."*
Happy Thanksgiving from Pastor Colin
*Quotes from "Feasting with Friends" by Douglas McKelvey
