"We Give Thanks to Thee for Thy Great Glory!"

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods,
for his steadfast love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords,
for his steadfast love endures forever. (Psalm 136:1-3)

Giving thanks is something you hear spoken of quite a bit around this time of year. Every year, people come up with new gimmicks for spending the month of November being thankful. One of the primary social skills we teach children is to say “please” and “thank you” whenever appropriate. And all of that certainly is good. But often what we hear, especially in the mainstream media, fails to answer two fundamental questions about giving thanks.

First, to what or to whom should you be giving thanks? Proper thanksgiving only occurs if and when you are thankful to some source. It is not enough simply to meditate on “Gee, it sure is nice that I have this neat thing.” That is not thanksgiving. Gratitude has an object, a reference point, a focus. The Psalmist demonstrates this in the opening verses of Psalm 136. To whom must you give thanks? To the Lord, the God of Gods, the Lord of Lords. He is the object of your gratitude, the focus of your thanksgiving. Direct your thanks to Him.

+ Leslie A Miller +

“Sir, We Wish to See Jesus”

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the Gospel lesson just read, Jesus and His disciples were in Jerusalem worshiping at the Passover feast, when some Greeks came to the disciples and asked, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” What a question of faith. For this is what shapes our whole lives in faith – the desire to see Jesus.

You and I wish to see Jesus also, as did Les. Many people spend their whole lives in search of Jesus, whether they know it or not. This is even evidenced by the popular question asked by Protestant sidewalk evangelists: “Have you found Jesus?” But where do we find God? Many people have many different answers to that.

+ RIP Eloise A Gesell +

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Eloise Gesell was many things in her life. She was a daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, great- and great-great-grandmother. She was a member of the community and a member of this parish. She was a skilled homemaker and gardener.

None of these things could have been accomplished without loss, in some measure. To be a child means acknowledging that you cannot provide for yourself, that you are reliant upon your parents to nurture you in body and soul. To be a sibling means that you must give up any exclusive claim upon the affections of your parents; you must learn to share. To be a husband or wife means that you must give up a measure of your independence and live not for yourself but for the one to whom our Lord has bound you. To be a parent means that you must look not only to your own needs and wants, but to those of the children God has given to you; you must be responsible for them and their well-being. Even to be a successful gardener requires sacrifice – you must submit the toil of your hands and the sweat of your brow to the ground, and pray for the bounty of the earth to spring forth.