Thanksgiving…The Day and the Spiritual Exercise

“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness; come before His presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord He is God; it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise:  be thankful unto Him, and bless His name  For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting; and His truth endureth to all generations.” –Psalm 100 (KJV)

Thursday, November 28, 2013 is our traditional fourth Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day.  Many families will mark it with gatherings for food and fellowship.  In the festivities, Christian families will take time to recall the major blessings of the year just past and give thanks for life, health, work, family togetherness, and a multitude of other significant benefits.  For some maybe the holiday will have an aura of sadness for the faces missing either from the death of a family member during the year or those for some reason who could not gather to celebrate.  It is good to express gratitude, and as Psalm 100 declares, to “be thankful unto Him and bless His name.”  I memorized Psalm 100 when I was a young child, and its precepts have guided me for many years to be filled with gratitude.

Thanksgiving Day goes back in America to that first gathering of Plymouth Colony survivors after the first rigorous year in America and the loss of over half their company of settlers.  Their neighbors, members of the Wampanoag tribe of Indians, who had befriended and helped the colonists also attended the celebration.  We have some extant records of that gathering that give us insights into the observance.  Chief Massasoit and some 90 Indian braves were there as were the 51 survivors of the first year of the Plymouth Colony.  We can imagine the resonant voice of Elder William Brewster as he raised his voice to read from the Psalter and pray.  Maybe he read Psalm 100.  The Indians brought deer and turkey and perhaps maize and other crops they had grown as well as edible berries and fruits from the forest.  The feast must have been a welcome sight to those who had lived in want and hunger.  That celebration began for America a tradition which was finally made a part of our annual celebration.

Thanksgiving Day reminds us to pause and make inventory of our blessings and be thankful.  It is good to have an annual day of praise and thanksgiving.  But as we observe it once a year with special efforts to make the day memorable, we should at the same time remember that gratitude is an ongoing and daily exercise of spiritual depth.  Not only on Thanksgiving Day once a year, not just at mealtime when we offer thanks, not just in church on Sunday, but continually have a heart full of gratitude for all things.  Eugene Peterson in The Message Bible expressed it well from James’s writing that  good and perfect gifts are from God and we should acknowledge them and give thanks gratefully and faithfully:  “So my dear friends, don’t get thrown off course.  Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven.  The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light.  There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle.  He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all His creatures.” (James 1:16-18)  Therefore, be thankful all the time! -Have a Happy Thanksgiving Day and may each day be filled with thanksgiving...and thanksliving! –Ethelene Dyer Jones  11.24.2013

Waiting and Trusting

“But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” -1 Thessalonians 5:8 (ESV)

In the context of this verse, Paul had written concerning ‘the day of the Lord’ coming as ‘a thief in the night.’  But he assures believers to whom the letter was addressed that they ‘are children of light’ and they don’t have to fear Christ’s second return.  Paul urges that we ‘keep awake and sober.’  He emphasizes here, as he does in Ephesians 6:10-18, that the Christian should be like a soldier, wearing the armor of salvation, putting  on the ‘breastplate of faith and love, and ‘the helmet the hope of salvation.’

Yesterday I received a letter from a missionary friend who is in the period between one assignment and the next.  Part of her work during this time she is not on the field is to solicit supporters of the mission task she will pursue.  Sometimes it takes great patience to await funding for projects and to be assured that the needs will be met.  During the interim between mission assignments, she is also undergirding her personal Christian strength by much studying the Bible, missions methods, and learning to trust God more fully for needs.  I thought when I read this dear missionary’s newsletter how much each of us, daily, like she, needs to grow in trust and faithfulness and wait patiently on the Lord to open the way He wants us to go.  Allow the interim period of waiting to be productive with personal spiritual growth and learning to trust God more and more.  If we wait and still doubt we are going against God’s promises to supply our needs. If we wait trusting, we will anticipate with joy and gladness the fulfillment of God’s promises, and furthermore we will find that He will supply our needs even beyond what we ask him, “pressed down, shaken together, running over” (Luke 6:38).  Wait on the Lord, and as you wait, allow your trust to grow stronger.  –Ethelene Dyer Jones  11.17.2013

Immutable

“Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.  Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God.” –Psalm 90:1-2 (ESV).

The word “immutable” means not capable or susceptible to change.  The writer of Psalm 90, though writing in the language of Hebrew poetry (and this particular Psalm is thought by scholars to have been written by Moses as the Israelites came to the edge of the Promised Land) conveys the sense of God’s immutability:  “from everlasting to everlasting You are God!” he declares.

This past week has been full of realization of God’s immutability and how God has been—and continues to be—our dwelling place in all generations.  I had a week in “my” beloved mountains, a time to rest and some of the beautiful days choose roads on which to sight-see that had unbelievable beauty, corridors of gold from the resplendent show of nature’s seasonal color.  Many times as one curve gave way to another and yet a more brilliant shower of color than the last splashed before my eyes, I was awed by the beauty and thankful for God’s handiwork.

This week I heard of deaths of two good friends and attended the funeral of one.  Saddened by the deaths, yet I was at the same time rejoicing that these two did not have to suffer further from age and debilitating diseases and that each knew the Lord.  One in his last day on earth told his wife that he had seen her mother (who had passed several years ago) and her beloved mother said, “Tell my daughter I’m waiting for her!”  The immutable promises of God gave the family members who remain hope and comfort in knowing that those who had passed were in eternity with the Lord.

In the mountains I was able to visit the gravesites of my great, great, great  grandparents on my maternal side.  We know the knoll on which they were buried and the graves have plain fieldstone markers, but this present generation does not know which grave site is the third great grandfather’s or that of his wife (third great grandmother) and at least two other members of their family.  In the place from which he had migrated with his family to come to Georgia, he and his father operated an iron foundry to supply metal for arms for the American Revolutionary Army.  I like to think that these ancestors knew the immutability of God and declared, as did Moses, “You have been our dwelling place in all generations.”

This week I added two more wonderful great grandchildren to my growing family. James Quinton and Amelia Elizabeth Jones, twin son and daughter were born to Rev. Matthew and LaTasha Sansone Jones on November 7.  They have had some premature birth trauma and are still in Neonatal Intensive Care, but improvement in their condition comes every day.  We pray that they will soon be out of NICU and be able to go home and make normal progress as healthy babies.  We rejoice in these new births and anticipate what they can become in the Lord through His immutable power.

Inspired by Psalm 90:1, Isaac Watts wrote the beloved words of the lofty hymn we like to sing:  “O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home!”  The time of rest, the beauty of the mountains in fall, death coming to friends, visiting my great, great, great-grandparent’s graves. and the birth of babies have all been strong reminders of God’s immutability and strength.  Isaac Watts termed it well:  “Before the hills in order stood, Or earth received her frame; From everlasting Thou art God, To endless years the same.”

 –Ethelene Dyer Jones. 11.10.2013.

Schooling Continues for a Lifetime

Schooling Continues for a Lifetime

“Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths.  Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; for You I wait all the day long.” –Psalm 25:4-5 (ESV).

Eugene W. Peterson in The Message version of the Bible renders Psalm 25:4-5 thus:  “Show me how you work, God; School me in your ways.  Take me by the hand; Lead me down the path of truth  You are my Savior, aren’t you?”  This past week on Thursday I went back to the building where I started first grade, the very place where I began a love for learning and a pursuit of knowledge that has been with me thus far through the many decades of my life.  I pray that the love for learning will continue with me as long as I live, for indeed, bar impairment to mind or loss of cognizance by some unfortunate illness, learning, or “schooling” should continue for a lifetime.  I like the practical and straight-forward way Peterson prays this verse:  “Take me by the hand, Lord, and lead me down the path of truth; make me know your ways; show me and school me!” 

I am a journalizer and note-taker, sometimes writing notes hither-and-yon where they come to me, but oftentimes systematically putting them in a “daily” journal, the dates, as time-reminders of where I was, what I was about, and how God was “schooling” me.  In the wide margins of my The Message Bible, I have written and dated events that show unequivocally how God took my hand and schooled me in His ways.  And at Psalm 25 are recorded several events since 2007(the year I added the Peterson Bible to my personal library).  These marginal notes  show without a doubt that God is still in the business of schooling me, teaching me His truth and leading me to have an understanding of His ways and His providential care and direction.

In a timely book by Leigh Mcleroy entitled The Sacred Ordinary: Embracing the Holy in the Everyday (Grand Rapids: Revell, 2008, p. 40) she asks, concerning our continuously learning from God in the “school of life” and sometimes in the “school of hard knocks”:  “Are you moving forward in your spiritual instruction?  Does your understanding match your spiritual ‘age’?  Are you being nurtured by God’s commands so that you may begin to walk in obedience?  Do you love your lessons because you love your Teacher?  Stay in school.  There is still so much to learn.”

Jesus encouraged us to continue our schooling.  He invited:  “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  (Matthew 11:29-30).  This past week I went back to my “roots” of learning, the building where I started first grade, a country schoolhouse now restored and set up as a community gathering place.  Much learning occurred within those walls when it served as a country school house.  Many went out from that place, inspired by dedicated and giving teachers, to pursue worthwhile lives that would contribute good and wholesome influence upon society.

This is my prayer for continuous schooling: 

Lord, Teacher, I want to learn the lessons You have for me every day.  Keep my mind alert and my understanding sharp.  In all my ways I want to acknowledge You so that you can ‘school’ me—direct my paths—show me.  Amen. 

                                                                                                                       –Ethelene Dyer Jones  11.03.2013