Thanksgiving and Praise

Thanksgiving means a short work week but a full calendar.

Monday, Nathan and I went out to eat alone for the first time in months. We still have gift cards from our wedding, proof that we rarely go out to eat.

Tuesday, we went out to Pizza ranch with Matt and Lena and my parents.  That evening, Nathan helped me make two pies for thanksgiving.

pumpkin and apple

Wednesday, I took a client up to visit his sister in Chicago.  I dropped him off at 3:00 and had four hours to kill. I had called ahead and asked the Eisenmann's if I could crash there for a few hours.  It turns out they only live 15 minutes from the sister's foster home.  I'm so grateful for friendships and connections. :) I had a great time chatting with Cindy and her mom, and surprising Ryan and Sarah when they showed up. 

I picked up my client at 7:00 and made it home by 10.

Thanksgiving day, we went to church and then spent the afternoon and evening at Fred and Di's.

The boys played a game

relaxing on the couch.

In Church, Ron read Woodrow Wilson's 1916 Thanksgiving day proclamation.  I think it is one of the best that I have heard.  It seems to still be true today. Work has opened my eyes to the harsh realities people can face even here the the US and none of us can close our eyes to the diseases, terror, and persecution going on all over the world. 

It has long been the custom of our people to turn in the fruitful autumn of the year in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God for His many blessings and mercies to us as a nation. The year that has elapsed since we last observed our day of thanksgiving has been rich in blessings to us as a people, but the whole face of the world has been darkened by war. In the midst of our peace and happiness, our thoughts dwell with painful disquiet upon the struggles and sufferings of the nations at war and of the peoples upon whom war has brought disaster without choice or possibility of escape on their part. We cannot think of our own happiness without thinking also of their pitiful distress.

Now, Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do appoint Thursday, the thirtieth of November, as a day of National Thanksgiving and Prayer, and urge and advise the people to resort to their several places of worship on that day to render thanks to Almighty God for the blessings of peace and unbroken prosperity which He has bestowed upon our beloved country in such unstinted measure. And I also urge and suggest our duty in this our day of peace and abundance to think in deep sympathy of the stricken peoples of the world upon whom the curse and terror of war has so pitilessly fallen, and to contribute out of our abundant means to the relief of their suffering. Our people could in no better way show their real attitude towards the present struggle of the nations than by contributing out of their abundance to the relief of the suffering which war has brought in its train.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington this seventeenth day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and sixteen and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and forty-first.

                          

Psalm 100:4
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

In Christ
~Michelle