PASTORAL PONDERINGS
Each year after Christmas and, before the New Year my mother would hand me blank Thank You notes and tell me that before the day was over, I was to have completed a note for every gift I received. This was pure agony. I would say, “but I already told them ‘thank you’ when they gave me the gift!” My mother’s response was that was not enough!
Years later when I had four boys to contend with, I repeated the same tradition that I had been taught. Not surprisingly, I got the same reaction that I had professed years earlier. As times have changed and fewer and fewer people can read cursive, thank you notes are sometimes electronic. That is probably ok, but the handwritten note is always impressive.
November’s holiday of Thanksgiving brings to mind all the blessings we have received, those people and conditions for which we are grateful. There are many ways that we can acknowledge what we have been given beyond a “THANK YOU NOTE”. Perhaps one of the most meaningful is in an affirmation and a realization that all that we have, and all we have hope of receiving, is indeed a gift of God!
~Rev. Dr. Fred Leasure, Parish Associate
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