Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances;
for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
As we move into Fall; my favorite time of the year in Texas, with cooler temps and changing
colors in the landscape, we begin to focus on all the ways in which we are thankful and grateful. A
dear friend shared a great idea on Facebook recently and so I thought we’d try to do it in our home.
So, each day during the month of October, Brad and I wrote something that we were grateful or
thankful for on our big, orange pumpkin. Some days we would write down something silly like
Frankenberry cereal (it’s Brad’s Fall favorite) or naps or chocolate. Meanwhile, on other days we
had to dig deep, especially during seminary midterms, to find that one thing to write on the
pumpkin. Nonetheless, the daily exercise of looking for “the thing” to be grateful and/or thankful for
helped even on the hard days.
This fun Fall activity led me to dig a bit deeper into the 1 Thessalonians scripture. The New
Bible Commentary say, “Christians have grounds for joy in both their experience of salvation and
their hope of what God will do in the future, but they need to express that joy; there is a right and
proper place for the expression of joyful emotion. Christians must also pray—here probably in the
sense of making requests to God, since the next command is about the need to be thankful.
Common to the three commands is the stress on fulfilling them all the time and in all circumstances;
this does not mean, for example, that one prays uninterruptedly but that one prays regularly and
frequently. Such a life is made possible, Paul adds, because God intends it to be so; he wants his
people to be joyful, prayerful and thankful, and he makes it possible for them to be so.” This led me
to a sigh of relief as I recognized that God doesn’t expect us to rejoice, pray, and express gratitude
uninterrupted, but often. Perhaps the pumpkin project is a great reminder to look for the moments of
gratitude or the things to be thankful for and to do so each and every day, even when it isn’t always
easy.
What are you grateful or thankful for today? Write it down. Look for the moments each and
every day.
Blessings,
Pastor Heidi