America is going down the tube? Not me! My granddaughter and a group of her friends just returned from a Mission trip to an Indian reservation in Eastern Washington. I know they slept and ate at homes of the people who lived there but I am anxious to hear what they did during their stay. I will see her on Thanksgiving day and her story will be the topic of our dinner. She is just 13 years old and her friends are all about the same age. Anyhow, with kids like these in charge of a future America,we will win!

I heard about a young girl who couldn’t get to sleep one night. She tossed and turned. Finally she grabbed a blanket from her bed and ran to her mom saying she had to take the blanket to someone who was sleeping on the sidewalk. Her mom tried to comfort her daughter, telling her to go back to bed now and tomorrow they would take some blankets to a homeless shelter. The girl would not give up until she had given her blanket to someone. The mom and her daughter got dressed in warm clothing and went out to the car. She drove until the girl told her mom to stop.The girl ran up to an elderly woman trying to sleep, her back up against a brick building. She handed the woman her blanket with tears in her eyes. “I want you to be warm,” was all the girl said. The woman said, “Thank you so much,” was all the woman answered.

It’s just a short story, but to that girl it meant a lot. She had given what she had, a blanket from her bed. She will grow up giving much more. ”’We don’t have anything to worry about with young people like that, do we? And I am telling you only about a few young people. I’ll bet you know about some youngsters who put their time into good things. We hear about those young boys and girls who are bullies and those who play a game knocking folks down on the sidewalks of America, killing some of them. Why don’t we hear more about the young people who do good things?

When we sit down at our tables, overflowing with good food, this Thanksgiving Day, let us remember those great young people in our midst. Be thankful that they will grow up and change American to be what we really want it to be. Oh, we should do what we can too, but we have not done such a good job in the past, have we?

The other day I was talking to the bus driver who said, “It seems like it has rained ever since I was
born.” Of course she was joking but it tells how we forget the good things when we are going through things that aren’t so good.

I said, “Do you remember what a beautiful October we had? It was sunshine every day and when the leaves were falling, they crunched beneath our feet. And the colors of those leaves! Oh they were so beautiful! We should be thankful for our eyes so we could see that grandeur.”

“Yes, it was beautiful,” was all she said but I could tell from her expression that she was remembering last October.

I thought about that this morning as I turned on the faucet and water gushed out. I didn’t have to wait, water just came into my hands. I didn’t say, “Thank you, God!” or anything. But I remember how hard it was to get water back when I was growing up. We had a stoneware jug sitting by our kitchen door and it became my brother’s and my job to keep the water jug filled. Now the town pump was down the road a bit and across a meadow so it wasn’t just outside! Not only that but we had to carry hot water in winter to prime the  pump before we got any water to run after we pumped a while. The pail filled with water wasn’t easy to carry home either.

I guess I am thankful that now we have faucets to turn on but I don’t think about how thankful to God I am. I usually just expect the water to be there. And that’s not the only modern convenience we should be thankful for. How about our ways to travel these days. I imagine walking was probably good for us  but I remember how cold it was to walk all the way to school every day! My dad often had to walk ahead of us making a pathway through the snow for us. Now, we have cars, trains, buses and airplanes at our feet so we don’t  have to walk unless we want to.

We have so much to be thankful for. Let’s not think about the bad things going on in our country just now. Instead, thank God for all he has provided, our homes, our families, heat to keep us warm and food enough to fill our tummies. If we dwell on the good things, the bad days won’t seem so bad after all