A Thanksgiving Message from Father AJ
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your families!
As our national day of gratitude has approached, I have found myself more acutely aware of – and deeply moved by – the generosity and abundance Trinity has experienced and offered over this past year. I am filled with gratitude for all that Trinity has done, is doing, and is planning to do; for all the gifts that this community has shared and the generosity with which you have shared them; and for all the life and joy pulsing through the congregation.
God has indeed provided more than we could have asked or imagined!
Priest and author, Terrance Klein, writing about the importance of gratitude, offers this reminder: “St. John of the Cross suggested that the first movement of an authentic spiritual life wasn’t an acknowledgement of sin. That’s probably second. The first movement of the spiritual life is gratitude: an awareness that all of nature, all the world, all of life comes to us as gift. It need not be. We need not be.”
Remembering God as the giver of all good gifts changes our perspective and enriches our lives. We need this “attitude of gratitude” more than ever.
Someone recently reminded me that in the angst and outrage of these days, what too-often gets lost is our sense of appreciation, our awareness of the abundant blessings of the never-failing loving kindness of God. But if (or when!) we look up from the latest shocking headline, we will see blessings all around us: from hot showers to caring friends, from medical treatments to solar panels, from beautiful music to the freedoms we enjoy. All this need not be….
And so, in this odd-yet-providential time of the year where Thanksgiving, Advent, Vestry Elections, and year-end budgeting all collide, I invite us to make the spiritual move towards gratitude, to see once more the wonders of God’s love, and to remember that it is all gift.
Thank you for offering your gifts to honor God and to further Trinity’s life and mission. And thanks be to God from whom all blessings flow!
