Thanksgiving

Well, another Canadian Thanksgiving has come and gone. It was a great reminder of all that I have to be thankful for. We had a great service at church on Sunday morning before heading to the cottage for an amazing family dinner (there were bout 26 of us and there were actually five families missing!) Sunday night, followed by a relaxing day on Monday.
Saturday was a great day for me as well, really setting the stage for Thanksgiving. A good friend, her daughter and her grandson, invited us to go pick apples. We loaded up in the car, and after hitting a few of the expensive, incredibly crowded tourist driven farms, we finally happened upon William's Orchard. It was a little family run operation were there was no admission fees, no crowds, no rented animals for a petting zoo and where the picking of the apples was the actual attraction. For anyone who knows me, this was far more my speed! Getting out into the orchard truly helped my frame of mind and my heart and the Thanksgiving part of the weekend began for me. I remembered all the years that we had gone apple picking for my brother's birthday as I was growing up and was thankful for family. My own family and friends were there with me in the orchard and I was thankful for time them as well. I was also reminded of the year that I spent working at an orchard giving school tours. It was a few years ago now, at a time when the church I work for could not yet support a full salary for me. I took the part time day job to make a bit of extra money. My wife and I often look back to those years when we followed a call to come to Milton, where there was no salary, right after my wife had just lost her job (the salary we were counting on!) as some of the most formative and important years in our faith development. It is where we learned to truly trust in God, that He would keep his promise to always take care of our needs and that we could trust His provision. We often fall back on the lessons learned during that time when we followed obediently (crazily by the world's standards) and had no other choice but to trust and rely fully.
Well, as I was out in the orchard, another thought about God's provision struck me. I was thinking back to the spiel I would run the tour groups through, about the Bud turning to a Blossom, pollinated by the Bees which would become the apples we were picking (done with hand motions for added emphasis!). It really is an amazing process to think about and I was once again amazed at the care, attention and detail that God has gone to to ensure provision for the people He loves.
There is a song that my family learned at camp that speaks to this. We often sing it as a blessing before meals . I think that it actually came from a Disney film way back. It is simple, childlike, and yet is profound in its simplicity:

The Lord is good to me,
and so I thank the Lord,
For giving me the things I need,
The sun and the rain and the apple seed,
The Lord is good to me.
For every seed I sow,
An apple tree will grow,
And there will be an apple tree,
For everyone in the world to see
The Lord is good to me.

Many blessings and Happy Thanksgiving!
I'd love to hear some of the things you are thankful for...leave a comment.