Thankful Perspectives

The First Thanksgiving

It’s estimated Americans will gobble down some 40 million turkeys this Thanksgiving . . . good time to be a chicken 😊

A customary Thanksgiving meal tradition is having each person seated around the table share one thing they’re thankful for . . .  family, friends, faith, health, material blessings, etc. . . . all good, all positive, all individually focused responses. However, focusing on thankfulness with a more global perspective, humbly altered my thankful perspective.

This Thanksgiving I’m thankful for being . . .

• Securely gathered with family and friends . . . not huddled together in a dark Ukrainian bomb shelter.
• Able to celebrate openly, thanking God with others . . . not secretly cloistered together in a small North Korean home fearing religious persecution.
• Unafflicted with a serious health issue . . . not lingering in some sub-Saharan African village where medical resources and treatments are non-existent.,
• Seated at a table laden with a plump, roasted turkey and all the fixins’ . . . not a barren table in Romania (the country with the world’s highest rate of hunger) surrounded by my starving, malnourished children.
• Living in a comfortable home, not surviving as one of America’s 771,000 homeless on the streets.

As so, this Thanksgiving finds me forever thankful, counting blessings, as Johnson Oatman’s song’s refrain echoes in my soul . . .

“Count your blessings, name them one by one;

Count your blessings, see what God has done;

Count your blessings, name them one by one;

    Count your many blessings, see what God has done.”

HAPPY THANKSGIVING !!!

Keep Looking Up ^ . . . His Best is Yet to Come!