What it is All About...

My Favorite Tradition

Later today, after church is done, my church family will do one of the things churches do best, we will come together in the evening and as a body, we will break bread together. 

Not as communion, or Eucharist, but as a Thanksgiving meal shared with the people we have prayed with, laughed with, studied with and served with all this last year. 

While we chow down it won't be about the feast, though that in and of itself is amazing and worthy of some attention. No, it will be about the talk across the table. It will be about the 15 third through fifth grade girls who I teach on Sunday nights sitting around me, giggling and basking in the special moment as they eat pie and cookies.  

It will be about the woman who has battled cancer all year, who battles still, sharing her joy and sweet presence with the rest of us who love her and pray for her. About the woman who lost her husband suddenly and found herself alone just a few short months ago. It is about sharing a meal with a family who is about to embark on one of the biggest adventures of a lifetime as they soon leave to plant a new church of their own. 

It will be about the kid who just got saved, and loves my daughter in that sweet and peculiar way first loves do - sitting with us for the first time at a holiday meal. 

It is about saying thank you to the people who have tolerated my loud laugh and quirky sense of humor. To the women who have laughed until they cried because I got the giggles. To the women who have opened their hearts and lives to me and my family. 

It is about celebrating and saying thank you to one of the finest pastors I have had the privilege of sitting under. It is a time of thanks giving. 

You may be thinking, Thanksgiving is a few weeks away, or I live in another country and do not celebrate thanksgiving as a holiday. Both of these may be true, but it does not change the fact that we can take a moment, a meal, a day and be thankful. 

We can deliberately express to our loved ones, the ones kin by birth and those kin by the blood of the Lamb, our gratitude. In the presence of our brothers and sisters, we can share our hearts as we share a meal. 

Most of all, it is a time to thank our Maker, who is matchless in His faithfulness and generous beyond anything we have ever known. 

It is about honoring those who have done all they could to secure all we have. It is about an attitude of gratitude. 

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What have you got to be thankful for?