Though I'm months late in this topic, I just had to write on Thanksgiving. Our family has a tradition during Thanksgiving. We fill cups with bright, colorful candy, and secretly hide pennies in each others cups. We can have as many as 5 pennies, or as little as 1. Each person empties out their cup, digging through a boatload of candy for the pennies. However many pennies you have, that's how many things you state you're thankful for. We take turns going around the table saying what we're thankful for, and dropping a shiny penny into our cups after each thankful word. Almost everybody says the usual things they're thankful for, family, house, food, water, love, common things like that. But do we ever name the things that we so often take for granted?
So often we take gifts that God has given us for granted. For instance, how many times today have you thanked God for letting you walk? This was something I took for granted numerous times. I felt like, 'Sure, everybody can walk', but not until my injury took that away, was I really thankful for being able to walk. And this isn't even true! Not everybody can walk, some people are born without legs, some people are paralyzed, not everybody can walk. And even if everybody could, would that make a gift any less? For example, if you gave to all of your relatives the same book, would that make the gift less valuable? It might seem to, but it really shouldn't. He gave us the amazing ability to walk, we should be thanking Him for it, not complaining when He takes it away.
What are other gifts we often take for granted, running, biking, skipping, how about even simply talking? Imagine if you couldn't talk, or see, or hear! How much you'd be missing out on! You couldn't tell people your feelings, see the beautiful trees blooming bright with orange and yellow, or hear a comforting word. Sometimes, to be truly thankful for something, you first have to have it taken away. I'm very thankful I can walk again, and with time my thankfulness will probably lessen, as it becomes normal to always be walking, but does that mean that we should thank God any less for this wonderful gift? Let's keep thanking Him for all He's given us, family, house, food, water, love, and also things we commonly assume everybody has, the ability to walk, run, talk, see, or hear.
Kayla Joy
