“I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.”

Psalm 9:1

I recently saw a video of a little girl.  She couldn’t have been more than 4 or 5 years old.  In the video, her Mom was asking her, “What do you love?”  For the next few minutes she listed all the friends and classmates she loved, all the toys, all the food, all kinds of things that she loved.  Finally, her Mom asked her, “do you love me?” And the little girl straight up ignored her! She was much more interested in something going by outside the car window and even with repeat prompting from her Mom she never answered the question.  The video ended with the mother’s exasperated sigh as the little girl continued to be interested in everything except answering her mother’s question.

We could easily draw some parallels between that encounter and to Jesus asking Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”  Especially knowing Peter’s response of, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Maybe that little girl thought her Mom’s question was silly to ask because of course she loves her Mom.  Maybe the little girl didn’t like being forced to express her love. Whatever the reason the mother seemed a bit dejected when her daughter refused to answer the question. It made me wonder as we enter the month of November, a time commonly associated with thankfulness, how often do we truly express our gratitude to our Heavenly Father?  Do we, like Peter, reply, “you know that I’m thankful” or do we like the little girl sometimes ignore the question entirely and fail to express our thankfulness?

The Psalmist states that, “I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.”  That is my challenge for all of us this month. To truly give thanks to the Lord with your whole heart. To tell of the wonderful deeds you have seen in your own life.  Not to treat it as a given, but to express it with your words and your actions. If you have one of those wonderful deeds you would like to share I would love to hear about it.  I would love to have some of them shared with the rest of the church during a service this month. If you don’t want to get up and speak yourself I would be more than happy to have you write it down and I’ll read your experience for you.  Ask your children if they have something they want to share, I would be happy to have them share what they are thankful for as well. My hope is that we can be comfortable sharing those “wonderful deeds” with one another so that when the opportunity presents itself we will be able to share them with others as well.  If you are willing to share catch me after a service or call/email me so that we can share our thankfulness with one another.

Feeling thankful and blessed,

Pastor Devin

For more information, please check out our November 2019 newsletter.