I have a hard time understanding why we have only one day of Thanksgiving in America! God has blessed us beyond measure, and it seems that every day is a day to celebrate brothers or brothers-in-laws, sisters or sisters-in-law, mothers or mothers-in-law, even cousins. It is often dog and/or cat appreciation day. BUT, we set aside only one day for Thanksgiving because we have the other 364 days filled with complaints!

I have spent some time in looking at what I believe to be MAXIMS – things that are true by their very nature that apply to Thanksgiving for me.

To live in fear is to live in the shadow of death! Faith should overshadow all fear. Our fears are either grounded or groundless. Such fear results from insecurity and the lack of feeling loved. Love casts out all fear! We know how precarious life is. We feel the threat both of personal calamity, weather related difficulties, and political catastrophe. Yet even in these we can trust God. If God is for us, who can be against us that matters?
The length of God’s love outlasts the stubbornness of our sinfulness! None of us are qualified to cast stones! We are never fully awake to reality until we wake up to self-centeredness and determine to fight it. The more we know both the reality of who we truly are, the more we are overwhelmed by the depth and stubbornness of our sins. Then we long to be rid of our load, to be free from the burden of sin.

The strength of His purpose is more durable than the straying of our aimlessness! How little time and energy, let alone wisdom, we give deliberately to pursue the pathway of right and good and purpose. Even our efforts to promote the common good are exceedingly scattered. How much time do we spend as communities to discover and do the purpose of God? The planner and executor of most of our lives and of history as a whole is not we, but God. His great plan holds our lives together and directs the nations more deeply than conscious intentions.

The rest in God’s peace is more real than the restlessness of our conflicts! How weary of wearing tensions at work, among friends when we are supposed to have fun, perhaps even at home. Without conflict and tensions there can be no growth either in persons or in community. We have not been promised to be delivered from conflict, but promised that in conflict we can find great victory by giving in to God’s master plan. This is real victory, even our faith in Christ.

The height of His hope erases the depths of our hopelessness! We love in the age largely benefit of hope. Gone is the old optimism in favor of new despairs.  Contrast such feelings with those of our youth; a sure hope; a believing that we could accomplish anything. Without hope, we have the right to despair, but when we stand on God’s promises, we have a new day and new horizons.

The surety of God’s promises is safer than the struggle of our doubts! Doubts are good when they serve growth; doubts are bad when they result from wrong. Spiritual doubts are more damming than intellectual doubts. Intellectual doubts must be honored. The doubts that are smoke screens, attempting to shut God out of our lives, must be destroyed. Our age is at least beginning to doubt its own doubts. It sees its own false certainties for what they truly are – our idols that stand in importance.

The freedom of serving others is more liberating than the fancy of our willfulness! Those who have found victory in life know the will of God, for it is freeing. Passivity gives power. To be free is to effect God purpose and plan for us and to express our whole nature. Freedom comes with fulfillment of self within the plan creation has for us. True liberty is the one with which Christ brings. Seeking freedom from self, we become servants; becoming servants enables us to find true freedom.

The certainty of his health is more healing than the coddling of our sorrow! Coddling our sorrows increases our illness; the immortal medicine of love heals them. Even when there is no help from illness, either from the doctor or from prayer, there is available a new heart of faith to bear up under it and to know that entrance into eternal life destroys all harm. Victorious faith should know the strain of victory.

The Light of Life everlasting refutes the lie of our demise! Our faith take death with complete seriousness. We are not by nature immortal, but headed for death. Nevertheless, when we know the God of Scripture, we know that He calls us back to life again! We know that for those who believe in Jesus Resurrection, there is resurrection, and that death bring birth!

Thanksgiving should be the time we take a fresh look at the blessings of God upon us personally and us as a nation. We should take time to think of His goodness and express appreciation in an appropriate way!     HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

The International Day of Prayer for Persecuted Christians (IDOP) is an opportunity for you and your family, small group, class and church to learn about the persecution of our brothers and sisters in Christ and how you can pray specifically for them.
Beginning Nov. 3, 2024, and throughout the month of November, join other followers of Christ around the world in prayer for persecuted Christians.
The Voice of the Martyrs’ 2024 IDOP short feature film, The Martinez Family: Colombia, invites viewers to experience the tension of being a front-line worker in Colombia’s “red zones.”
The red zones are areas of Colombia that are controlled by Marxist guerrillas like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and other paramilitary groups active in persecuting Christians.
Visit The Voice of the Martyrs web site at:www.persecution.com to learn more about the work being done by and for persecuted Christians.

For a unique visual experience visit the Art Boat in Seadrift any time from October 20 through November 9.
Look for the open Art Boat door.

Here is a preview:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SdLXHfzO_TU

Many people have been delighted to gather together this year at Seadrift’s bay front to enjoy great music, fellowship, and best of all, a word from the Good Book! October was the last month in 2024 for Bay Praise. We look forward to starting up again in 2025!

Pictured is Debbie Head. She is three months in serving as the Seadrift Methodist pastor. She delivered the last message for 2024 at Bay Praise.
-Tanya DeForest

I have a special perspective on the phrase: “Blood is thicker than water,” a saying who’s origins can be traced all the way back to 12th century Germany, because although I did and do have blood relatives out there, most of them I have not seen since 1996 after my mother’s death.

Going into the why of the last part of the above paragraph would take tons of time, effort, and words, as well as meaning giving the readers of this column insight into personal spaces better left untouched or at least better off talked about at another place and time.

Due to the above, I was always prone to say that you could have ‘family’ outside of your blood and although at first it may seem at odds with Scott’s statement I maintain that both are true.

You can have people in your life that are as close as blood relatives to you, more so if as said your past leads you to search outside your bloodline for closeness and a sense of belonging.

I’ve also found that the reverse can be true at certain moments and that blood can indeed be thicker than water and no matter how close you feel to someone you may never be as close as their sister or mother.
This can cause complications because as tight as this ‘family’ can feel you might find there are certain subject matters and boundaries that you are forbidden to cross.

Mostly I’ve found these to be matters of health or the heart, and I’d add politics and religion to that list but conversations on those subjects can break any relationship, no matter how thick the blood might be.

Coming from that angle, the phrase seems to hold true, but this is only because in my humble opinion that is how society has programmed us to think that certain subjects are better off being ‘kept in the family.’

For example, I know a lovely woman in Oregon who was adopted and is ten times closer to her adopted parents than her real ones.

In her case, it is a matter of familiarity and who did what for whom, in other words if you act like mom, look like mom, and talk like mom…you are indeed mom.

Similarly, my ex’s son once told me that he knew I was not his real father but he at the time still looked at me as being his dad.

These questions have been rattling in my mind as I have temporarily (or longer) as noted in last month’s column become a caretaker of sorts and it was for one of my best friends elderly father and an exchange between me and the son had me ruminating on that old phrase.

Personally for me at times it all leads to brief moments of being sad, knowing that I’ll never be as connected to a group as others are to their family and when it comes to things such as holidays not always having a place to be.

On the other hand, it means that I don’t deal with some of the massive headaches I see come from that closeness as well.

Perhaps the secret is in the mixing and the mixture and maybe the dynamic can change if you stir really hard…as long as you don’t mind the sore wrists.