Well, this is Thanksgiving. It’s the holiday with all the wonderful things I love: good food, time off with family and time for remembering that our crazy lives are more blessed than we deserve. It also is the beginning of the most interesting time of year. This is when we try even harder to get along with the people God chose to put in our lives: our relatives.
Our friends are the people we choose to involve in your life. If it gets messy, we can just get new friends. Family is where we get to work out all our patience, forgiveness and understanding. We have to. They are connected to us for life, whether it’s easy or not! (Anyone feeling warm and fuzzy yet?)
When things go badly, it can be so hurtful. We all really just want to get along. But we are so very, very different. How do you make it work? What do you do when Aunt Ginny tells mean jokes about Uncle Arnold? How do you explain to Cousin Fred that the children aren’t allowed to shoot rifles in the backyard? Who is going to keep Grandpa from snoring so loudly on the sofa that no one can hear the game? And, for goodness sake, who is going to tell you to shut your mouth when you-know-who says it’s your fault Granny left him out of the will?
Dicey, lovely moments like these are what make the holidays so… special.
Today, though, as I read Jesus’s words about the end times in Luke 21, I felt like I was reading about a good American family holiday.
“But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and will persecute you… for My name’s sake. It will lead to an opportunity for your testimony. So make up your minds not to prepare beforehand to defend yourselves; for I will give you utterance and wisdom…. But you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends… and you will be hated by all because of My name. Yet not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives.”
We are meant to be together. Life is not a long string of easy, comfortable experiences. Problems, difficulties, misunderstandings, meanness all pass throughout the hands of a sovereign God. They are for our benefit, for our testimony.
This year, I hope we all sit down to a dinner that is more than delicious. May we look around and know that the people around us are gifts to us from God above. Even the strained, difficult relationships are from Him. Gifts of grace to lead us into His greatness.
Thanks be to our God for them, His precious people, who make us a real family.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Pass the burnt toast!
