Much Thanks

I love Thanksgiving! The food, the family, the friends, the food! For me, Thanksgiving has always been the perfect prelude to Christmas. It's the time of year that should remind us of where all our blessings come. Abraham Lincoln said it so well in this excerpt from the Thanskgiving Proclamation of 1863:

"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us."

Wow. What a powerful statement made by one of our nation's former presidents. Can you even imagine our current or future president making such a declaration? Can you imagine what Abraham Lincoln is thinking of our world today? What he said about our country back then applies an hundred-fold today! Our world would be a different place if we had god-fearing politicians like Abraham Lincoln. May we resolve to remember from where all blessings stem and always be grateful in our words and deeds.

This year we stayed in Hollister for the holiday weekend. We hosted Thanskgiving dinner at our house and invited our dear friends, the Meyer family, and our awesome neighbors, the Greenes. After dinner was over, some more friends from church joined us for dessert. You should have seen the number of pies, cakes, and other concoctions from which we had to choose. It was so fun! We enjoyed visiting with everyone and are so grateful to have them in our lives. It was a really great day! Thank you everyone!