Our Greatest Gratitude

The pavement is sleek, reflecting the lights of the van parked across the street. Sky, iron and heavy, has draped itself over the neighborhood, and the slightest swirl of snowflakes is in the air.

Here is the shift of seasons, the merge of fall and winter. So subtle, yet inevitable. And the week of Thanksgiving, we may be met with a merging of our own hearts – grateful for the blessings big and small, weary from the wreckage of the world. I woke to the lingering sweetness of church service and pie social last night, and to heartbreaking news of a colleague and friend in Africa killed in a car accident.

The tension, the weight, the fullness of joy and disappointment, and the release – the not-so-secret is letting Jesus have them both.

For that is what makes us most thankful – a Lord who can and does hold all the delightful and dreary moments, the hard and the holy, and is with us in each.

Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior,
who daily bears our burdens. -Psalm 68:19

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” -John 15:13

Jesus with us in the shiny start.

Jesus with us in the murky middle.

Jesus with us until the end.

Behold, our greatest gratitude right now and always.

Wherever you are this Thanksgiving, you are in good hands, because you have Him.

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Grateful for you; it means the world that we journey together.