Thanksgiving 2020

Good morning, Five Minute Families! Thank you for joining us here today. At Clear View Retreat, we always try to bring our focus back to the Lord and keep a clear view of His perspective and not our own. So, let’s talk about the fact that this is Thanksgiving week. I can’t believe Thanksgiving is in just a couple of days. Wow, it has been a very long year. These last nine months have been worse than any pregnancy. At least at the end of a pregnancy, there is hope, joy, renewal, and the sweetness of new life. Many of us through these nine months have barely been able to hang on. We keep hearing the thread throughout articles, posts, memes, and more…. Let’s get 2020 over with so that we can get past all of the awfulness it brought to our lives. That makes me think… On Sunday, our church celebrated its first ever Thanksgiving Easter Egg hunt. There were fewer people and many of us were masked. But, the kids had fun gathering candy while the pastor took their joy as an opportunity to share the gospel message again and in a way that they could better understand than during the Sunday morning “big service.” Yes, Easter and Thanksgiving are certainly different this year, to say the least. Early on in the pandemic, we tried to focus on some of the positives… we discussed intentionality in March and followed that with ways that folks were being joyful in the COVID chaos. Well, it goes without saying, but I will say it anyway… 2020 has dragged on and on and has been an incredibly difficult year. Yet, thanksgiving is still upon us. Are you actually thankful? Do you have ‘an attitude of gratitude’ or do you stick with platitudes? You know, five things we are not thankful for this year are: Masks Less traveling Smaller gatherings or no gatherings The death of a loved one Constantly changing information What do we do with the disappointments that threaten to creep in? Ah, Five Minute Families, when we are told in James 1:2 to count it all joy when we encounter trials that does include in the midst of a pan