"Joy does not simply happen to us.  

We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day."

Henri J.M. Nouwen

Thanksgiving Homily

In Luke 17. Jesus of Nazareth is traveling along the border of Samaria when ten lepers call out to him asking for a healing.  They are all healed and only one returns to say thank you - a Samaritan. 

I heard a story recently about a man who was lost in the woods. Later, when describing the experience, he told how frightened he was and how he had finally knelt and prayed. Someone asked, “Did God – answer your prayer?” “Oh no," the man replied, “before God had a chance, a guide came along and showed me the way out.”   

You laugh, but we do the same thing. We miss God providing for us each day. 

Think about what it would be like if we woke up today with only the things we thanked God for yesterday?

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  We awake to see the sun shining and don’t give thanks to God. 
• We hear the birds chirping, see beautiful flowers and trees, but we don’t give it a moment's thought that God has given us those blessings and given us the senses to enjoy them. 
• We turn on the water and never think of how so many in the world don’t have running water, needless to say, hot water.  
• We complain about our jobs, forgetting that many would be grateful just to have a job.  
• We complain about having to social distance or wear a mask rather than thanking God for our good health. 
• We grumble about this virus's inconvenience while others like the lepers in our Gospel story face death today.

To be oblivious to the fact that God is blessing us, or even worse, to take credit for His blessings as if we earned them by your efforts is just as big a slight to Jesus as those nine lepers not returning to say thanks that day. The Samaritan leper is our model for this Thanksgiving Day.  It’s important to remember to thank God for our blessings.

But there is a more profound message in this Gospel story. This Gospel message also challenges us to reach out to others. We all have lots of people in our lives that are risking the loss of their soul's salvation because they don’t recognize what God is doing in their lives. By living our lives in gratitude to God, we have the opportunity to witness our faith to those around us like the Samaritan leper did that day. 

We who have known Jesus 'healing power in our souls by giving the glory to him with thankful hearts can draw those around us to the Savior. If we live like that exuberant and grateful leper praising God for his blessings in our life, people around us will be attracted to our JOY.

The root of joy is gratefulness. It is not joy that makes us grateful, it is gratitude that makes us joyful  Look closely, and you will find that people are happy because they are grateful. The opposite of gratefulness is just taking everything for granted. Today let’s not take things for granted but realize that everything is a gift.

Let us glorify God this holiday season with a grateful heart.

Thanksgiving - Love one another.

 Two scriptures came into my heart this morning as I prayed about Thanksgiving.

• “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Romans 12:15

• "Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters." 1 Peter 3:8

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because its purpose is to take time to be grateful for our blessings and spend time with people we love. .

Thanksgiving is also a time that challenges us to be the face of the compassionate Christ. For me that means thinking about people who are alone on one of the toughest days to be alone. Most of us know someone who will not be able to be with family this year - especially this year! Let us all reach out at least by phone and have a heart to heart chat with someone who cannot be with loved ones. Then we will be obeying Saint Peter's encouragement to love each other as brothers and sisters.

Happy Thanksgiving!  I thank God for each of you!

It is so easy right now to ask, "Why is this happening God?" 

A wise man once said:  "God is too good to be unkind, and He is too wise to be mistaken.

And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.” 

Even though I think I know God's heart, I sometimes feel like Tevye, the poor Jewish milkman, from Fiddler on the Roof when he speaks aloud to the Lord:  “I know, I know—we are the chosen people. But once in a while, can’t You choose someone else?”

Perhaps God allows suffering as part of His creation because we would not recognize good without the contrast of bad. There may be some strange plan in all of it.  We might need the absence of joy to know it when we experience it. 

In Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," Ivan, the brilliant agnostic, and his devout brother Alyosha are discussing why there is evil.  Ivan can analyze humankind's failures and critique every political system designed to deal with those failures, but he can offer no solutions.  Alyosha has no answers to Ivan's intellectual problems, but he has a solution for humanity: love.  "I do not know the answer to the problem of evil," said Alyosha, "but I do know love."

The answer to the pain of the world is ... love.  

During these challenging times, let's all follow the advice of our great Mark Twain: 

“The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.”  

Love someone today ... especially if they need some cheering up.

You are something special!

In the Book of Genesis, God spoke:

“Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature. God created human beings; he created them reflecting God’s own nature. He created them male and female. And then God blessed them: 'Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!  Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.' God looked over everything he had made; it was so good, so very good!"

Today we are reminded that God made each of us a uniquely beautiful person that he proclaimed to be so very good. Each one of us is an unrepeatable expression of God's goodness and beauty. If we do not live that truth and express it in our lives, it will never be expressed in this world for the glory of God.  

Today live the miracle that you are and glorify God ... in each moment ... in each encounter.

The Post Election Tempest

 Many of us are feeling emotionally exhausted by the election bickering.  As we await the results of the election we are wondering what life will be like when it's over.  We need to remember God already knows the result and how He will use whatever happens to advance His mission to save the world.  And He will use whatever happens to advance His purposes! We all need to tune out the social media firestorm and the torrent of news and not sink into despair. 

Peter walking to Jesus on the water should be our model.  Storms were battering Peter and threatened to sink him until he fixed his eyes on Jesus. 

If we keep our eyes on Jesus, we will be able to stand above the craziness that we will be subjected to these next few weeks. We'll be able to stand in the midst of the growing tempest of questions and conspiracies and not be overcome. I encourage you to fix your eyes on Jesus. 

Pray for our country and our leaders today.