Thanksgiving 2011

We hope you had a blessed Thanksgiving!

I notice in the photos I took of our Thanksgiving meal and table that almost every pretty thing in our dining room, in our china hutch, in our sideboards, and on our walls has been a gift to us. This year I made an effort to use my grandmother's silver, cut glass, and linens, which I have inherited and mostly kept locked away because they were "too nice." This is the only earthly life we get and, if we are so fortunate as to be given beautiful table decorations, we would benefit from using them to mark special days and honor loved guests. It is a shame to keep such gifts locked away from sight, as if they are "my precious" (a la "Lord of the Rings"). Indeed, such is living real life that while setting the table I managed to break an item of my grandmother's that had lasted 60 years . . . till now! And this is living real life.

Looking over our Thanksgiving photos and my seeing that truly every beautiful item at the table worth admiring was a gift to me which I didn't earn nor did I deserve made me think of God's many gifts to his creatures: human beings. Whether he gives a person beauty, particular intelligence, inborn talents, health (health at birth, health that lasts), or graces with which to cooperate, these are free gifts which none of us earned and certainly none of us deserve. St. Paul admonishes us not to boast of what we have received: "Who confers distinction upon you? What do you possess that you have not received? But if you have received it, why are you boasting as if you did not receive it?" (1 Corinthians 4:7).

And of all the gifts God has given us, the greatest is this: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life" (John 3:16).

So, on this Thanksgiving day, we remember to say, Thank you, Lord.