Day 30: Thanksgiving

If you are reading this blog in a timely fashion - you are amazing. And it is Thanksgiving morning. Clearly, you are not cooking the turkey this year!

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Isaiah 53:1-3

I trust that part of your spiritual awakening involves a growing awareness that all that glitters is not gold. No one has the “perfect” Norman Rockwell family. My prayer is that you will use your tools to approach this day without expectations and dreams of fantasy families.

I’m asking God to remind us that Norman Rockwell had plenty of time to edit out of his idyllic paintings the political sniping, the passive aggressive digs, the over-indulgences, the flatulence. He never included in his backdrop a contentious football game between rivals.

I’m asking God to remind us that the baby in the manger, who some of us may put on our mantles this evening once we clean up today’s turkey remnants, looks cute with a couple thousand years to edit the experience, throw some tinsel on it, and turn it into a Hollywood production. But Jesus probably wasn’t even born on Christmas Day - it’s just the day that worked as a convenient celebration. And you know why the Christian Church chose this day? It turns out they wanted to deflect attention from a pagan holiday that was already on the books for December 25th!

Brush past the trappings in your life and look for the real deal.

Wherever you are, there you be. I pray that you will remember today how much God loves you!