GRACE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Life is a gift. We often forget this in our many conversations and news reports that centre on “rights.” A gift comes to you as is. You have a choice to receive it. You can reject it. You can receive it grudgingly. You can receive it with thanksgiving. The only choice that doesn’t appear to be an option to you or to me, is simply remaining “neutral” about it. Thanksgiving comes even in the strangest of times with the pandemic upon us.

 

All of us know thanksgiving is a choice. No one is forced to either give it or receive it. Some of us may have felt family pressure to take part in meals and the like. But in the end, we choose.

 

I am grateful for my families. I appreciate the Grace family, and I know it’s been hard in the last six months or more, not being able to gather. Now we can gather for Thanksgiving, some of us, and that’s good. We give thanks to the Lord, together, whether in the building or not.

 

I appreciate my immediate family. Alexandra and Bradley are moving to BC for work, to the Okanagan. Stacy and Teti are here. Stacy is great with child and will give birth any day. This is her second child, who is a girl. Boaz, her firstborn, is a boy. These are exciting times and changing times. We are doing our best to juggle our responsibilities and our family concerns. I’m sure you are doing the same. I hope you can give thanks for your families as well, no matter what you face in complications, challenges and joys.

 

I appreciate my family in California and in Newfoundland. My brother in California is doing well and his children and grandchildren. We are not close, but I try to keep contact. Many of you know we lost our older brother, Chris, in the summer. So…new births, some deaths, moves, changes of many kinds through Covid and life goes on.

 

Life truly is a gift to be received with thanksgiving. I trust you will be able to celebrate that life as you are able and sensitive to all that is going on this season and in this year. Praise the Lord.