It's deliciously cloudy out--and suitably chilly--and I'm relishing to the prospect of a day in my kitchen full of happy bustle and preparation for Thanksgiving. We'll be going to my parents' tomorrow, and we're looking forward to a day on the farm with Philip's family on Friday. But today is 'at home' day and I have a lovely list of rituals to set my hands to, not to mention the delight of a precious friend on her way over for tea. :)
There's a stock pot of sweet potatoes simmering on the stove and soon my religiously traditional cranberry conserve will be filling the kitchen with its loved tang. And Katie and I will sip orange rooibus tea by the fire and catch up on several month's worth of news...and hopefully I will remember to stir the conserve so that it doesn't burn! ;)
The thing that I absolutely love about Thanksgiving Eve is that it's always the same. Even after I married I continued to be responsible for the same dishes for our family feed: the aforementioned cranberry sauce, pecan pie (though it's simply called 'nut pie' in my family, owing to a long-standing feud over the pronunciation of that offending word...those of you beneath the Mason-Dixon line may comprehend the seriousness of this dispute) and sweet potato casserole (and if there's anything we know in the South it's sweet potatoes...loaded with butter and brown sugar and those divisive nuts!)
Here's a little piece I wrote on this day a year ago:
“Remembering our dependence on past mercies kindles gratitude. Gratitude is past-oriented dependence; faith is future-oriented dependence. Both forms of dependence are humble, self-forgetting, and God-exalting. If we do not believe that we are deeply dependent on God for all we have or hope to have, then the very spring of gratitude and faith runs dry.”
-John Piper, A Godward Life
Thanksgiving is still a month away, but for some reason as the strains of Classical music came from the radio early the other morning, I thought of the CD with Thanksgiving hymns my grandmother had given my family last autumn. The CD accompanied Barbara Rainey’s book Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember, and had a delightful collection of instrumental hymns with the theme of thanksgiving. My not-quite-awake husband was bewildered as to why that had crossed my mind at that particular moment, but I knew I’d have to ask my mom for the title so I could look for it. -Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember, by Barbara Rainey With heart and soul and voices…
A few hours later, however, Merritt pulled a book off the shelves of the Habitat for Humanity thrift store in our hometown. And there was the very book and CD I’d been thinking of that morning, just like new! I think sometimes the Lord arranges these little “coincidences” on purpose, just so we can delightedly thank Him at the finding.
Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember details the story of the first Thanksgiving, illustrated with beautiful photographs, and sprinkled with historical highlights. In between, you’ll find such bits of wisdom as this:
Being grateful is a choice. It’s not a feeling dependent on our circumstances, as we clearly see in the Pilgrims’ lives. They believed that God was in control—“
So now I have our first Thanksgiving “coffee-table book,” and before Halloween has come and gone, the sacred tunes of another holiday, a truly holy day, are filling our home…
Now thank we all our God
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