Hello friends,
I hope everyone had a joyful Thanksgiving!! (was that only one week ago) We certainly enjoyed a feast along with great fellowship here! We had some special guests and had a blast spending time together!
It would be an understatement to say that giving thanks is a theme in the Word; and that very theme has been replaying in my mind this last week. An un-scientific search found over 60 verses specifically about giving thanks, here are a few.
Ps. 107:1 "Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!"
Psalm 105:1 "Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples!"
Phil. 4:6 "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God."
The theme echoes in my heart again from songs that I learned as a child: "Give thanks with a grateful heart; give thanks to the Holy One…" to a new book, "One Thousand Gifts" that I recently received in a package. The author, who advocates for thanking God for simple, daily blessings, says, "Something always comes to fill the empty places. And when I give thanks for the seemingly microscopic, I make a place for God to grow within me…. God is not in need of magnifying by us so small, but the reverse. It's our lives that are little and we have falsely inflated self, and in thanks we decrease and the world returns right."
So this month I invite you to give thanks with me, for the big and small, the sublime and the incomprehensible. Here is the beginning of my list this month.
I thank the Father for:
- a beautiful, healthy new niece Suzanne
- you all!
- cool breezes and a opportunity to use a cozy quilt
- the internet
- opportunities to share Truth
- new sisters every week
- the man who came in walking this week (who couldn't' walk last week)
- two new, wonderful roommates
- energetic visitors from America who laugh with us and love the people we love (and bring us turkey's for thanksgiving.)
- pecans
- hope for a baby whose situation seemed hopeless
- hot showers
- Christmas music (O, Come All Ye Faithful)
- visiting my family and Memphis in 2 weeks!!! That's right, I'll be holding Suzanne in TWO WEEKS!!
….. and this list goes on and on.
This has been a good season, and I am thankful that the Father is Faithful when I am not, that He loves me when I am self-focused and that He allows me to be a part of what He's doing in the world even though He doesn't have to.
This month:
Ask that the Father will continue to draw many to Himself and that He would bring us women who are want further training on how to spread what they have learned.
Ask for really good time of reconnection with family and friends for myself and others on my team visiting the States over the holidays
Stay posted for an opportunity to be part of something really special this coming April…
Thank you for your encouragement, partnership, pr*yers, packages and support. It means sooo much!
I'll end with this thought, with Christmas in mind:
2 Cor. 9:15 "Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!"
Blessings,
Leigh
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