Thanksgiving

Good morning brothers and sisters,
Today's reading is a Thanksgiving reading from Deuteronomy. As we start the day with this reading I'd like to remind you of our ecumenical Thanksgiving service at Laurelton tonight at 7pm with our neighbor churches. The point of Deuteronomy is to remind Israel of their past and prepare them for their future in the land God is giving them.

One of our leaders put it well last night in a discussion about prayer. She said it's sometimes hard to pray when things are going well. That's one of Moses' main concerns for the people of Israel after he dies and they settle into the land. He worries Israel will forget that all the good things they have come from God. They'll give themselves too much of the credit for what they have and become arrogant and complacent in their faith. Keeping this book with them would help Israel remember that God gave them everything they have.Thanksgiving does the same for us. Thanksgiving reminds us of all our blessings and reminds us that those blessings are a gift from God.

Blessings on your Thanksgiving week and on living a grateful life each day,
Sam

Deuteronomy 8:7-18

⁷For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, ⁸a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, ⁹a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. ¹⁰You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.

¹¹Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. ¹²When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, ¹³and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, ¹⁴then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, ¹⁵who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions.

He made water flow for you from flint rock, ¹⁶and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. ¹⁷Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” ¹⁸But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.