My thoughts (Robin Herman):

Have you ever forgotten your dog outside in the rain? Ever forgot to feed them? Step on their tail?

Bailey was a crazy little gray dog, about 35 pounds, with all the attitude imaginable for a creature of his size. Countless times, I’ve walked out into the living room and seen him standing outside the sliding glass door waiting to be let back in. His paws are up on the door frame and every breath exhales in a whine. As I get closer, his feet would pitter patter with anticipation and his whines would get louder and more insistent. He could be cold and wet or just hungry, but he left no doubt that he wanted inside.

There were times I’d been back in a room for hours and came out to see him at the door. Oops! I’d run over to the door and let him in. Without fail, he was delighted to be let inside. Delighted with me and delighted to be inside. That is my favorite thing about dogs: they live in the ‘now.’ One second, they can be absolutely miserable and the next, delighted. My dogs have never been mad at me, never held a grudge, never got back at me. They are a wonderful example.

I’m a dog trainer, and people are always telling me that their dog was bad because they were mad at them for leaving them home alone. Bless dog’s little hearts, they are just not that complex in their thinking — they’re just upset because they’re alone and can’t control it. It’s interesting that we attribute such a human trait to them. We project a lot — probably more in line with how we’d behave sometimes.

I want to learn to live in the moment like dogs do. If they got mad at me, or bit me for not letting them in soon enough, we would not have the relationship we do. It’s the fact that they forgive me so quickly and run in the house just as happy as they can be that endears them to me and makes be strive to be a better care taker.

I’m a dog trainer, they are a people trainer. And I’m really grateful for all the lessons I’ve learned.

Thought for the day: My dog knows how to “let things go” — grudges, anger, revenge. What can I let go of today?

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (David Zier):

There is someone in my life that I do not see or talk to very often. We email occasionally, and we include each other in our prayers. This person has been an important part of my spiritual journey in the last few years, and has given me much encouragement and joy. This person seems to bring out gifts within me, and says things to encourage me even when I am not in a good place. The way they share their faith, even in the smallest of gestures, or the way they offer encouragement to me and others, is a blessing. God’s love pours out to overflowing. What a gift!

As I read this passage in Philemon, the words are something I feel for this person. When I think of all this person has done in my life, I give thanks to God for putting this person on my path. Seeing how they love and walk in faith is inspiring for me, and others, to be a better person, to follow Christ, and to continue on the path of discipleship.

Who is it that you wish to give thanks for during this season? Who has made a difference in your life and shown you deep love and faith that shows Christ?

Thought for the day: Reflect on the people that have shown you great love and faith, and remember to lift them up in gratitude and thanksgiving, and give thanks to God for the impact they have made on your life.

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (Ben Lamb):

“Oh man! I have to be nice to people I really don’t like, ’cause Jesus says I must. It’s there in the Scriptures, plain as day. Where’s a big ol’ eraser when I want one?”

Sadly, the above approach is what I’ve used when thinking about this passage in previous times. Yet, God hasn’t given up on helping me to try and have a change of attitude toward people, including the needlessly- inflated opinion I often have of myself.

As I try to look at these words through the eyes of Jesus, they take on a much different sense. Here’s a memory refresher: Jesus was without sin and humans are with sin; let’s now look again at some instances regarding his words.

• Verse 33: “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ” Jesus (sinless) did good for everyone (sinners) with whom he had an encounter.
• Verse 35: “But love your enemies, do good. . . expecting nothing in return. . .”  Jesus (sinless) showed love for everyone (sinners) with whom he had an encounter.

If I’m a follower of Jesus — and, hence, trying to be more like him every day — how can I not try to act as Jesus did?

The last half of verse 35 made me stop in my tracks and give thanks: “. . .he [the Most High] is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” Instead of having that previous mindset of “It’s everyone else who is ungrateful and wicked,” I now admit that I fall somewhere on the Ungrateful-and-Wicked continuum along with everyone else. Yet, God is willing to be kind to me, too.

Happy Thanksgiving to me!

Thought for today: Every day is a day to give thanks to God for somethin’-or-other.

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (Steve Adams):

When I was 24 years old, I got a phone call that changed my life forever. It was my father, telling me my mother had died from a stroke. Suddenly, I was filled with emptiness and mourning. There was no time to pause, though. My responsibility was to drive to my grandparents’ farmhouse about a half hour away, and deliver the news: their only child had died at age 49.

As it turned out, a massive February snowstorm descended on the Illinois prairie after I arrived, and my grandparents and I were snowbound for the next two and a half days. Family and friends couldn’t come to us for support, and we couldn’t get to them. It was as if all the forces of nature were trying to paralyze, isolate, and freeze us in our black winter of despair. The telephone was the only form of communication we had. Those were days of mourning, days of being “clothed with sackcloth.” Note: as Genesis 37:34-35 shows, sackcloth was donned in Old Testament times as a sign of intense mourning.

Death — no one can escape it. No matter how grand our time on earth may be, everyone ends up in the grave. Psalm 44 says, “. . .we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

But our Mother/Father God provides us with ultimate deliverance! Thousands of years later, the Apostle Paul answered the Psalmist’s lament in Romans 8:

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Our greatest enemy — death — will one day be destroyed! (I Cor. 15:26).

Since those dark days after my mothers passing, God has turned my mourning into dancing a thousand different ways. Of course, there are still times I “wear sackcloth,” but God continues to deliver. And my grandparents also saw joy again. Exactly one year after my mother’s death, at the encouragement of their best friends, they went on a Caribbean cruise with them. More importantly though, after passing from this life, they are reunited with their daughter and other loved ones in eternity. “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (I Cor. 15:55)

Prayer for the day, inspired by I Corinthians 9:15: Lord, you take the cold finality of death and transform it into life eternal with you! Thank you for your indescribable gift — a gift so great the heart cannot grasp, and words cannot capture!

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (Keith Phillips):

Seldom do I think to express my gratitude for places. With regularity I thank God for the beauty of particular places, and I am grateful for what happens or has happened at some special place. But, for me usually, it’s as though the location itself is incidental.

This is especially true for my church. I’ve been trained to understand the church as the assembly of God’s people. The building in which we assemble seems quite secondary to me. Yet, without that place the assembling doesn’t happen so easily.

King Solomon, fulfilling the promise of his father David, had just completed the construction of a magnificent place for worship, the Temple. God’s people had gathered for its dedication. The priests had just carried the Ark of the Covenant into the Holy of Holies, and the other worship leaders had led the people in a wonderful time of celebration. Just then “the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God” (verses 13b, 14).

Wow! The presence of the Lord was so strong in that place that the worship leaders couldn’t, and did not need to, lead God’s people in worship! How powerful that must have been! The place was filled with the glory of God.

I am grateful for our church, the building as well as the people. The place where we worship is called a sanctuary, a holy place, where we can expect to encounter God and God’s glory. Hardly a Sunday goes by when I do not feel the presence of God in that place.

Sometimes, though, I have to be reminded, just as the Israelites were during the Babylonian captivity after the Temple had been destroyed, that God and God’s glory cannot be confined to a place. I can powerfully encounter God’s presence anywhere.

The pastor met a five-year-old on the street and offered to give him a quarter if he could tell him where God was. “Preacher,” said the boy, “I’ll give you a dollar if you can tell me where God is not.”

Thought for today: God, thank you for that place, the sanctuary, where I know I can encounter You. I am thankful for Your church, the place as well as the people who assemble there. I am also grateful that You and Your glory are not confined to any place. Amen.

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (Steve Adams):

Oh, I don’t mean sexual orientation, but something else! It’s how we perceive the events of our lives; the things we have and the experiences God gives us. Are we oriented to being grateful? It’s one thing to go into “thankfulness mode” for one day while I gather with family or friends to eat turkey dinner, but it’s quite another to have an ORIENTATION of thanksgiving that causes me to see life through a grateful lens, and will endure throughout the ups and downs of everyday life.

One simple example is the painting that hangs over my front door. I’ve looked at it hundreds of times without giving it much thought, but yesterday, it was different! Instead of barely noticing it, I appreciated the fact that my great grandmother, who was a Christian, painted it in 1898. That caused me to be grateful that I was able to spend time with her as a child, which was possible because she lived into her early 90’s, a fairly rare occurrence in the 1960’s. The key is in seeing, and remembering.

Psalm 103 is so wise to exhort us not to forget God’s blessings, because we DO FORGET! But each time that happens, an orientation of thankfulness will cause us to remember them again with great intensity. And, with practice, we can become a lot better at not forgetting.

Do you ever have times when God seems distant and elusive? Psalm 69:30 says thanksgiving MAGNIFIES God, who appears bigger and closer when viewed through a thankful heart.

Sometimes I think we talk ourselves into the belief that thanksgiving is irrelevant, like when life is so difficult that it doesn’t seem to make sense to be grateful. I think this is an illusion. A thankful heart still has room to experience grief, sorrow, and other often difficult emotions. A thankful heart can still be “real.” It’s just that a foundation of thanksgiving can enable us to pull through trials and not lose sight of the reality of God’s love.

Thought for the day: So, what is my orientation? Is it toward being thankful? Do I see my world — the good and the not-so-good — with a grateful heart?

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.