The Week of Thanksgiving - Giving Thanks for Others

Thanksgiving is a time to pause and acknowledge our gratitude to God for the many blessings we have received over the course of the past year. If we are grateful to God, it seems to me that we should also take time to be grateful to one another. Ours is an age when people do not reach out and express their gratitude – it is almost taken for granted and this is a great shame.

Recently, I was at the local supermarket early one morning. While going through the check-out line I expressed my gratitude to the older women who was serving me. She had gotten up early for her shift. The look of surprise on her face was telling and expressed a deeper truth that her job did not receive much appreciation. She valued the small gesture of offering thanks and returned the kindness.

A simple yet powerful story….

A group of men were sitting around one day reminiscing about things in the past. One of them said: “I am grateful for my teacher, Mrs. Wendt. For thirty years ago, she taught me about Tennyson and he has been the joy of my life.” One of the other men asked, “Did you ever write to her about that and thank her?” He said, “No, I never did.” He was encouraged by the group to do so and after diligently finding his former teacher’s address; this is the response he received:

My Dear Willie,

I cannot tell you how much your note meant to me. I am in my eighties, living alone in a small room, cooking my own meals, lonely, and like the leaf of fall, lingering behind.

You will be interested to know that I taught school for forty years, and yours is the first note of appreciation I have ever received. It came on a blue, cold morning and it cheered me as nothing has for years.

What an awesome letter. Look at the power those two letters had. Dear readers, you and I need to Stop, to Think, and to Thank – reaching out to others by writing a note, or paying a visit, or calling someone and simply saying "thank you" for something that they did in our life. Jesus was continually thanking his Father for all that God did and for all that was given to him. As disciples of our Lord, we should do the same: thanking God and thanking others.

Love One Another - Brian