November, 2026 – In Everything Give Thanks (Uh, Really?)
“in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” – I Thessalonians 5.18 NASB And the same verse in the Amplified Bible puts it this way: “in every situation [no matter what the circumstances] be thankful and continually give thanks to God; for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.”
At times, those words can be a lot easier to speak or to read, than other times when they seem almost impossible to carry out. When I was a young teen, I had a sweet little cousin who had apparently done something naughty enough that her daddy had to give her a spanking. She cried and cried – not from the light spanking, but rather that she had been caught. When she finished her ‘cry’, she came to her father and had just one thing to say to him. “Daddy, I am so glad you gave me a spanking, because I had something in my eye all morning hurting it and couldn’t get it out. But the tears washed it away!” Can you imagine? She was thankful for the spanking!
When one of my sons was a teenager, he let me know ever so kindly and sweetly that he thought I was harsher with him than I was on his brothers. I know, every child thinks that, but I told him that if that were the case, there was a good reason. Telling him that I had known so many ‘babies of the family’ who had not turned out well from little to no discipline or too much coddling, I was determined to not have a ‘youngest child syndrome’. His response to me was: “I guess, then, that I should be grateful.” (BTW, I did apologize to him if at times I indeed was harder on him . . . ) But point being, he was thankful!
I could name many, many times in which the verses from I Thessalonians 5 have applied to me personally, but will relate just this one. In 2020, I damaged my already very damaged back to the extent that I couldn’t walk upright for weeks and weeks – and couldn’t walk at all without wanting to scream in pain. I finally got to the hospital (not an easy feat during covid), had an MRI – and spent the next few months in physical therapy. (That was a time when I Thessalonians 5.18 was so much easier to read or say. To be completely honest, the verse never even entered my thoughts!) That being said, in 2022, I injured my knee – really injured it having dealt with it from having hurt it back in my high school days. I had arthroscopic knee surgery, and once again entered P.T. for several weeks. Truth is, my knee (or as I call it ‘The Knee’) will never be well, but I can make do.
That’s not where my grateful spirit comes in. After, perhaps, six months of knee exercises (which I still do to this day three times a week), I began to notice that I didn’t need to take all the fresh veggies to the table and sit to make a salad. I could stand at the kitchen counter and make the salad. And then I noticed I didn’t need to take all the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies to the table to sit and make the dough. It came to me that the exercises I had been given for my knee/leg had become infinitely beneficial to my lumbar spondylolisthesis, lumbar spondylosis, scoliosis from childhood and/or kyphoscoliosis, and a spinal stenosis-riddled back– far more so than to my knee – even more so than the exercises I had been given for my back injury. The ‘knee’ exercises strengthened the muscles around three vertebrae from the bottom-up including a bulging disc, a slipped disc – and bone rubbing against bone.
Do you see? Had I not received the knee injury, more than likely I would be bedridden from the pain in my back – or, be in a nursing home – and worst of all not be able to ‘finish the course’ God gave me through Love From Above in Romania. You have no idea how grateful I truly am that my knee got ‘bashed’ against some metal on the back of a seat while disembarking a plane in Munich – with pain so severe I nearly passed out. Had that not happened — well, as I mentioned it would be hard telling what my life would have become – what it would be today. So, it’s ‘yes’, really! – in EVERYthing, no matter the situation/the circumstances, give thanks’. Trust the Lord for the outcome(s). Truth be told (again), I still need to learn this in so many areas of my life to . ‘Lord, please teach me to always give thanks . . . !’
A most Blessed and Happy 2026 Thanksgiving to all of you!
I loved that little song, “He’s Still Working on Me” – can still hear my sons singing it when they were young having learned it in Sunday School and the Christian School they attended. Just think of it! – ‘It only took our Creator a week to make the moon and stars, the sun and…
It seems as though every time something goes sideways in my life (as it does in everyone’s life), my first reaction is to get anywhere from wanting to run and hide – to being upset – to getting depressed! You would never know that I did copious research a few years ago to teach a…
“He rescued me, because He delighted in me.” – Psalm 18.19b Or, in my own very loose translation, ‘He (God) is kee-razy over me!!’ I’m thinking that that was not what my mother was thinking on the day she delivered me all those many years ago in a sweltering August. It seems like every year…
I love the Patriotic Song, “God Bless America”! Written by Irving Berlin in 1918 during World War I, he revised it in 1938 leading up to World War II. The words are as follows: While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free,Let us all be grateful…
How blessed one is to be loved and nurtured and supported. Oh, I definitely have two or three in my life that have seen it as their ‘calling’ to disrupt God’s ‘assignment’ in my life with the intention, even, to perhaps destroy not only the ministry God entrusted to me, but also, me, personally. Those…
Because of logistics, our families rarely got to see each other, but my mother had a friend who was, indeed, appropriately named Grace. And Grace just loved – loved me as a child, and after my parents ‘passed’, she loved me even more. Her own two daughters told me at one time, that their mother…
