It’s all about gifts and giving – always! This month, when we gather and celebrate Thanksgiving, is a good time to take stock of how conscious we are that everything we have and everything we are is a gift from God – and to resolve again to be more intentional about using those gifts wisely and well, to become better stewards of the abundance that is ours. Here’s a Thanksgiving meditation to try sometime during November:
At the end of the day, think back through your day, slowly, from the beginning, and name the gifts you were conscious of. Did you wake to another day of life? Are you healthy? Were you able to get up, get dressed, and go to the kitchen? Was there food in the refrigerator or the pantry with which to make breakfast? And so on through the rest of your day… Some blessings will be primary and immediately obvious. Others will be “secondary blessings” – things you have purchased and can use because you have been blessed with the talents and skills that allowed you to earn the money to buy them. How many blessings were there just between the time you woke up and lunchtime? How many more before nightfall? How many had you taken for granted before thinking about them in this intentional way? For which are you most grateful?
Not just at church during the stewardship renewal or on Thanksgiving Day, but every day in every way, we are called to be good stewards of God’s blessings. That means receiving them gratefully, cultivating them with care, sharing them generously and with love, and returning them – and our thanks – to God with increase. We are always the stewards of God’s abundance, whether we realize it fully or not. May we, in this month of Thanksgiving, be more conscious, more intentional, better stewards of God’s good gifts! Happy Thanksgiving!
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