For it is good to sing praises to our God;
For it is pleasant, and praise is beautiful.
2 The LORD builds up Jerusalem;
He gathers together the outcasts of Israel.
3 He heals the brokenhearted
And binds up their wounds.
We now pray in thanks to You, Lord, because we know it is a good thing to do. This holiday which we celebrate was established for it. Who can deny that goodness and plenty in this land exceed what would be measured out to us if we received only what we deserved? You do not leave our lives to be defined by the foolishness, greed, malevolence, poverty and unfounded discrimination that mark our everyday conduct. Instead You awaken us to compassion by Your mercy on us, to truth by Your faithfulness, to love by Your gifts, to joy by Your presence and to Your coming kingdom by healing.
You have made it pleasant now today to think about how much we have. We are not rich, each of us, in the same things; we are differently endowed by You. But who now lets himself or herself get stuck in comparing what they have to what others have, when we can rejoice that what we have comes from You, the Eternal Creator and always faithful Provider? Who wants to need stuff when, here, today, You offer us the joy that what we have is but a tiny portion of all that You want to give us? Who wants to be gloomy considering today, for now, what he or she might lose, when we can be made glad that the Providential God of the Universe is looking out for our happiness and well being.
We thank-you that Deb zealously threw herself into being the hands and the cook of these immediate gifts of your bounty for us. We thank you that she worked hard and for days to create this dinner for us, and we ask that Your appreciation will magnify ours and that she will be happy to have done this and restored to the new days’ tasks tomorrow.
We thank-you that you have gathered us who have never celebrated Thanksgiving together to do so today because we know all the claptrap about unchanging traditions of celebrations and traditions with too much specificity serve to divide us and make us compete leaving people more disappointed and frustrated than Thankful. If nothing else, we here, today, are trying hard to live out the lives You have laid before us and we are grateful that you have preserved us with good gifts beyond what we could make for ourselves or demand as our just rewards.
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