Despite the Christmas decorations in department stores, it is Thanksgiving Day, the day which, in theory, we give thanks. The question that sits before us like the proverbial, giant turkey in the room into which no one dares slice, is: “To whom are we giving thanks?” If you gather on this holiday with family and friends to enjoy an abundant table laden with the traditional fare and someone asks that question, how would you answer?

My wife and I are not “beach people.” We could be living in Nebraska for the few times we have been to the beach in the last five years. It takes having out of town company to get us there. Our attitude was the same when we lived in Naples, Fl, for twelve years, and before that when we lived in Jupiter, Fl. In fact, we have lived in Florida for most of our adult lives. The question going through your mind right now is, “Why?” Two words – God’s call.

It has happened again despite our best efforts to stave off such travesties. We purchased bags of candy anticipating a steady stream of costumed neighborhood kids and only a handful of them showed up. Now we are “stuck with” a large bowl of some of my favorite candy. Oh, the horror!

A few weeks ago, I celebrated one more birthday by adding another notch to my belt. You see, each year on my birthday, my one request of my wife is that she prepare for me an obscene quantity of my favorite food – spaghetti with a cheesy bechamel sauce. My request always presents a moral dilemma for her, pitting her love for me against her concern for my health; that dish would be high on any cardiologist’s list of foods to avoid.

Every week for the past 35 years of ministry, I have thought about what is essential in corporate worship. I am a musician, and when I came to faith in Christ in a small, south Florida church, I naturally volunteered to be in the choir.

In this morning’s news, nestled among the latest updates on Taylor Swift’s love life, was an article reporting the growing number of America’s non-religious.
Pollsters have been reporting on the growth of the “nones” for decades.

In 2005, celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, launched a bold initiative to improve the substandard quality of food served to children in Britain’s school cafeterias.
A decade later he reported that his initiative failed because, bottom line, the kids didn’t want the nutritional food he was promoting, they liked what they were getting.

I am not even remotely mechanically inclined. It is for guys like me that cars used to come with what my mechanic friend called “the idiot light.”
Pointing to it, he said, “If this light comes on, you got trouble; come see me.” Did he just call me an idiot?

I saw the movie “2001, A Space Odyssey” when it was first released in 1968.
In this story by Arthur C. Clarke, a crew of astronauts ventures into space to find the beings who planted a monolith on earth millennia earlier igniting the evolutionary process.

I had been a pastor for eight years before I enrolled in a seminary. When I first met the seminary’s director of church planting, he said, “Have you ever given any thought to planting a church? You’d be good at it.”