Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Thanksgiving 1

As we enter into the opening acts of the "Holiday Slide", I thought I would take a few blogs to discuss being thankful.

What does it really mean in this holiday season to really be thankful in our daily lives? For me, it means consciously slowing down when I am speeding up. I know so many people who love the holidays but also say they are the most stressful time of the year. As I have gotten older it has stopped surprising me that many women actually get so stressed out by the holiday season that they need to take medication to get them through to January. We want everything to be picture perfect for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We spend enormous amounts of money to deck our halls but does any of it bring us closer to God? Does it make us more thankful for what we have? Do we appreciate the time we spend with our families during the holidays more because of what we are wrapping? Does all the hullabaloo make us more mindful of what the season represents?

All of this makes we wonder what we are doing to ourselves as we try to celebrate the 'most wonderful time of the year'.

What would happen if we stopped trying so hard to make our holiday celebrations picture perfect and focused on God's perfect son who was born in a stable for us?

As we get ready for Thanksgiving next week, what if we chose to take a moment every day to breathe deeply, pray to God and list all the things that we are truly thankful for? Do you think it would slow us down enough to enjoy the actual holiday rather than just run through it?

Maybe we should all try it and see.....
CS

"Come let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with Thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the Lord is the great God, the great king above all gods." Psalm 95:1-3

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