November, 2025

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Greetings,

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November already. Where has the year gotten to? I preached a sermon recently in which I used an illustration of a person who always answered the question "How are you?" with the answer "Grateful". I have been thinking about that word and where it comes from as we come up on Thanksgiving, this month especially. But also, as we seem to be inundated with news and stories everywhere that can make us despair and want to be ungrateful.

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As I see it the word grateful has at its root the words gratitude and full. I am not using linguistic rules here. That is my understanding. In my understanding, when we are grateful, we are full of gratitude. We are grateful. Gratitude, full! When something is full that means there is no room for anything else. A full gas tank means there is no more room to put more gas in the tank. A full stomach means no more room to put that last piece of pie at Thanksgiving, even though we may try. A full cup means one more drop and the cup will run over the brim. So, to be grateful, full of gratitude means we have no room for anything else. We have no room for the negative comments about our neighbors, we have no room for the disparaging remarks we hear about other people, we have no room for the craziness we sometimes see in our world, because we are too full of gratitude. We are too full of hope in Christ, too full of love of God, too full of the peace Jesus brings, too full of all that has been promised in hope of Christ, too full of all that brings joy in our world and for that we are filled with gratitude, we are grateful.

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Sometimes it is hard to find those things for which we are filled with gratitude. But God promises us they are always there. As we look for them, we find they begin to fill us far more than the things of the world that steal our joy and cause us misery.

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May you find gratitude and be filled.

 

 

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In Christ,

Pastor Pat