The Pastor's Corner for November 2016

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Does anybody smell turkey yet?   With my vivid imagination taking over my senses I can already start to smell turkey, sage dressing and pumpkin pie baking and cooking in my brain.  Can anyone answer the question why Turkey on Thanksgiving has a special taste that cannot be duplicated or replicated at any other time in the year.

Every Thanksgiving we go to our daughters for Thanksgiving and like her mother she is a good cook.  So, the turkey is fantastic, the dressing bar none, and the sweet potatoes that her mother in law brings would be the Pax de Resistance if it weren’t for the pumpkin pie!  But going to our daughters has its draw backs as we don’t get left overs so sometime shortly after Thanksgiving Diana will bake a turkey and we will have our own Thanksgiving with true Thanksgiving left overs from the day before.
 
Now remember I said Diana is a very good cook but no matter how hard she tries it just doesn’t have that Thanksgiving Day Turkey taste.  It tastes fantastic what Diana prepares for us and she does prepare with a whole lotta’ love, but that Thanksgiving Day flavor seems to be missing.  So as I ponder I think to myself could it be a house full of family that if the fire marshal counted the number of occupants of our daughter’s house the fire marshal would shut it down because we are way over maximum occupancy levels.  Could it be children and kids playing, or parents who are watching a football game are getting too involved and because of kids and football anyone else who is there must speak foghorn loud just to hear their own voices.

There is an old Kris Kristofferson song called “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” In that song Kristofferson captured that special holy feeling one use to get on Sunday mornings before every store, gas station and supermarket was open all hours of the day.  In that song we hear the words:​

“Then I crossed the empty street and caught
The Sunday smell of someone fryin' chicken
And it took me back to something that I'd lost 
​somewhere somehow along the way”

Growing up in the world I knew as a kid I remember Thanksgiving was a lot like Sunday mornings where the world seemed very quiet and reverent or another term we could use for Thanksgiving is the holy hush.  That still, sacred feeling that one gets when God’s spirit has descended upon us and you became aware that there is something special or sacred going on.  

With all the love given and all the prayers said in gratitude you can’t help but think that God’s Spirit has descended and blessed us all and that is why I think Thanksgiving Turkey cannot be duplicated or replicated.  It is a country side and a nation who gathers at the table in a chorus on a single day in November to give thanks to the God who makes all things possible.

So this Thanksgiving I pray you take the time to feel what Thanksgiving is all about.  I know the stores will have deals and sales that can’t be passed up!  But before we get up from the dinner table remember Kristofferson’s words: “And it took me back to something that I'd lost somewhere somehow along the way.”  

See you Sunday,

Rev. Dennis Hopes