Gratitude is the memory of the heart ~ Jean Baptiste Massieu

Thanksgiving.
A time for being with family or friends.
A time for feasting on wonderful food and sharing in fellowship.
A time for setting one day aside for resting and giving thanks
for life~ love~ and health.
What will you do this thanksgiving?
Watch the Macy’s thanksgiving day parade while preparing the food?
Will you sleep in and relax or
will it be a day of bustling around baking and cooking
‘stressing’ to make everything just right.

Before our day begins~ My prayer for us all is to stop
stop
Pause and slow down
to give thanks.

My prayer is that we will open our eyes
to look and see
what we have surrounding us.

My prayer is that we will know
how richly blessed we are.

We are warm~ fed~ and loved.
We have clean sheets on our beds and warm blankets.
We have furnaces that take away the chill at the touch of a button
and ovens that cook our food.
We have hot water by the turn of a faucet
and warm towels from the tumble of the dryer.

We are blessed people~
We have the freedom to go the church of our choice
or the market when something is needed.
How sad it is that
We forget…we forget.
We are forgetful people and our memory is bad.

We are ungrateful at times
We seek more and strive for more.

While others in different countries have nothing.
We remain ungrateful and forgetful
and it is sad to realize that is who we are.
I pray that we can see
we are wealthy and rich and so abundantly blessed.
Given much~ our bounty is full
Our cupboards are running over.
Even when we live from paycheck to paycheck
we still have the choice of grocery stores
with the ability to replenish our stock with
fresh water to drink and the protection of a home.

Thanksgiving needs to be
not just a day to sit and fill ourselves
with wonderfully warm food prepared by loving hands.
It needs to be
it must be
a way of life.
We must find a way to remember to give thanks
to the one who loved us first
and provides for us all that we have.

We must find a way of waking each day
and reminding ourselves
how much we have to be thankful for.

Gratitude is a memory of our heart~
We must remember how far we have come.

Are we grateful this day
Are we thankful this day
can we allow ourselves to ask the question?

I read today on anothers blog,
and I hope it is ok to share:
“When we sit around the table and reach out for each others hands
we enter into a sacred place.”

May our hearts prayer
not just be a short ‘thank you for this food prayer.’
But a prayer of thanksgiving
for we are truly blessed and richly provided for.

The same blog I read said:
Without the pause before the thanks, it is just habit.

May we never make giving thanks a habit
that is so mundane and normal
that we lose the power of the sacred moment.

Prayer is a sacred place
I pray that we will allow this thanksgiving
to become a new way of life for us.
I pray that we will allow ourselves a quiet
silence to ‘give thanks with a grateful heart’.
On this Thanksgiving I wish you a new way of life
and a new hearts perspective to be thankful.