Nov 23, 2011 9:19am
Thanksgiving: Giving Thanks In Tough Times
EmailNo matter what your religious faith, you’ve probably heard the hymn NOW THANK WE ALL OUR GOD. ”Now Thank We All Our God, With Hearts and Hands and Voices…” One could imagine the composer of that hymn experiencing a boon in life and blessings being showered upon him from every source. But that is not the case.The composer of that hymn is Martin Rinkart, a 17th century German clergyman. In 1637 the plague hit his small town, killing over 8,000 people. Rinkart worked at the beds of the sick and dying and buried more than 4,000 people himself. The plague was followed by a famine, and the clergyman had trouble finding bread and clothes for his own children. It was in this context that he wrote his famous hymn of trust, praise and thanksgiving. How is that possible? Because even the midst of such calamity, Rinkart found things for which to be grateful.There’s a verse from the Bible that says, “In all things, give thanks.” It means that the very act of giving thanks changes us. Not because we always feel like it, but because giving thanks allows us to look deeper than our surface pain or troubles- to be united with a reality outside of ourselves.You may not be doing well in your life right now. Maybe you’re sick or struggling financially. Perhaps you have family troubles or marital woes. Most are dealing with something. What Thanksgiving reminds us to do is to appreciate that all of life is a gift. Graciously given to us: time, the earth, our loved ones, and, yes, even the struggles.”Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way. With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.”HAPPY THANKSGIVING
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Dear Fr. Ed:
Thanks for the nice Thanksgiving reminder. I will print it for our bulletin board
Keep up the good work-I am proud of you.
Joseph D
Posted by: Fr. Joseph, c.p. | November 23, 2011, 4:04 pm 4:04 pm
THANKSGIVING POEM
It’s almost Thanksgiving, twenty-eleven—
So gather, thank God above in his heaven:
For turkey, for stuffing and plenty of pies,
For parades, for dancing and growin’ one size!
Seize the moment, it doesn’t last long.
Do celebrate; make it your theme song!
Open the wine you’ve saved ’til now
Pop the cork and do take a bow.
Happy Thanksgiving, may hearts find their peace
In God be our Love to only increase!
Posted by: Jennifer Roche | November 23, 2011, 11:13 pm 11:13 pm
A PRAYER OF THANKS:
Our father who art in heaven thank you for giving us the good people, the ability to exterminate countless millions of evil men. Those that died from these exterminations will most certainly will be thrust into the fires of hell. We the exterminators attend your churches, so we are good and pray daily.
To show you our gratitude, and to make you love us even more, we’ve exterminated nearly 210,000,000 evil humans in the 20th century alone. The worldwide death toll of the First World War was a measly 17 million people and in the Second World War was only 66 million, but since WWII we’ve eliminated 86 million more. Mao’s regime in China killed over 45 million, 29 million more were exterminated in Russia, and over 12 million in Africa. This doesn’t include worldwide murders, abortions and starvation’s of humans since then, or approx 85,000,000 more.
Along with the slaughter of over 9 billion helpless but evil animals per year in the United States alone and an estimated 200 billion worldwide we pray you God to let your good work to continue.
We promise by your grace to keep up your great work of eliminating this evil from the human race by developing more weapons of mass destruction. Thank you God for giving us the intellect to continue developing these good weapons of mass destruction, and to enable us good humans to accomplish your good work. Those weapons now include biological, laser, and radiation weapons and we promise to starve, abort and murder as many evil humans as we can. I pray you God, we promise to continue your bidding in your name. At least we’ve never killed in the name of the Devil, as we know he appreciates us by our sending him so many evil souls.
Unfortunately, We must beg your forgiveness and we are sorry that our extermination numbers have been down as of lately (only less than 1,000,000 evil humans) in the War on Terror, but we promise to increase that total shortly in evil Iran. Hopefully, over 10 million evil humans will be killed in just one day. Since all those people are evil, the Devil may thank us personally
We know by our great accomplishment, that you will welcome us into heaven because we good humans are the one’s who’ve done this slaughter. Only us good humans will die by natural causes and go straight to heaven.
Thanks be to God!
Posted by: blind spot | November 24, 2011, 12:01 am 12:01 am