Humbly and with thanksgiving

               Just last week, my husband and I traveled to Illinois to celebrate Thanksgiving in our daughter’s home with other family and friends.  In thinking back, we realized that this would be the sixth state in the last seven years that we have been with family somewhere for this occasion.  West is the only direction we have not traveled from our home here in St. Louis.

               This year, however, we were able to go to the annual Ferguson Partnership Thanksgiving service on Wednesday night before we left, something we have done many times over the years but not recently.  As we walked into Blessed Theresa of Calcutta Church, we heard wonderful singing as people from the various churches had become a special choir for the night.  Various clergy led us in reading the scriptures, praying and presenting a message on Luke 18, emphasizing the importance of praying and not “losing heart.”  After the service, many people stayed for the simple reception and the opportunity for fellowship that it provided.

Amid these last years of change, my husband and I found meaning and comfort in again being part of this observance of where our expressions of thanksgiving should ultimately be—to God.  As the scriptures say, “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises unto thy name” (Ps. 92:1).  It is also a good thing to come together as Christians focusing on what joins us, our faith in Christ and our sense of its importance in the community where we live.

               I am reminded of a familiar verse from Micah, verse 8:  “What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”  When we come together with genuine thanksgiving and love for God and one another, surely that is part of how we walk so humbly and so simply with God.