ABP, Day 13 - Happy Thanksgiving!

I didn't get around to posting last night. Too much going on! Trevor got home yesterday. We picked him up at the local Amtrak station at 1:45 p.m. (he had to board the train at about 3:45 a.m.) and then came home for a couple of hours before leaving again to meet Phillip for supper (Portillo's) and church. Other than that yesterday was a day of cleaning and Thanksgiving prep. I will be cooking for our immediately family only today. We will eat a late lunch, probably around 2:00, and then spend the rest of the day napping, reading, playing games, watching movies, and making music. Glorious.

I have read a few things here and there from people who have dismissed Thanksgiving as a silly holiday because, after all, we should give thanks at all times, and anyway, what is our secular government doing telling us to give thanks to a God it increasingly prefers not to acknowledge? And of course, there is all the Black Friday (um, make that Black Thursday) noise, making it seem as though the deity to whom we bow is checking His book not for the names of the saints but to see who is going to turn a profit this year.

I don't care about that. I love Thanksgiving. Christmas and Easter have been lost to secularism; that doesn't mean Christians dismiss them as meaningless days. Yes, we give thanks at all times; we also daily confess our sins. Yet we still have seasons during which we more intentionally ponder our need for repentance. Why not one day on which we more fully consider all that we have to be thankful for, in both the temporal and spiritual realms?

I wanted to post a Thanksgiving video and I thought of this song, sung a few years ago by my husband's junior high choir. It is not a Christian text and is not really about thankfulness. But the text from a poem by Sara Teasdale expresses the wonder of looking around and being rendered speechless by the beauty of it all, in both the small and the infinite. I pray you look around yourself today, wherever you may be, and find loveliness to ponder, loveliness that makes whatever you have suffered in your life worth it. May you also know that even if you question if it has all been worth it, Jesus, who spent all He had for the loveliness of you, who bought you without counting the cost to Himself, says unequivocally, yes. You are lovely. You are His. You are worth it.

"Barter" - Sara Teasdale

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up,
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like the curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be. 

Barter from Cheryl on Vimeo.