Tomorrow in the US, families will gather at dinner tables for the Thanksgiving holiday. Many will enjoy a feast beyond all proportions that feeds them not for just a single day...but for the whole weekend. During this season, some break their banks to ensure each and every thing that everyone never wanted is supplied. It starts on Thanksgiving with more food in a day than some around the globe eat in a month. Then on to Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales where, as they say, we "buy things we can't afford to impress people we don't like." We give some of those items away on Christmas and finally pay off our credit cards by the time we receive our income tax in April. No wonder we're ungrateful; it's stressful and we're maxed out.
It's amazing how blessed we are...yet some dread Thanksgiving, despite its meaning, even though they're surrounded by loved ones while others are alone. Some of us are UNGRATEFUL which means not feeling a readiness to show appreciation for, or to return a kindness. God has been so kind to us, but ingratitude's disposition is not pleasant nor acceptable. Three signs of ingratitude are murmuring, complaining, and discontent. American Ballerina Suzanne Farrell said, 'It's ungrateful to be wishing you were doing something else at the moment you are living. You haven't lived in the moment you are really living...you are wishing you were somewhere else." Has your ingratitude come from feeling stuck and desiring your circumstances to be different? Are things as bad as what you think and feel they are? Sometimes they are; most times they're not.
Ingratitude is one of a long list of negative attributes the Apostle Paul says people will have in the last days. "People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people." (2 Timothy 3:2-5) It would probably be easier to have nothing to do with these people...if WE were not these people. Paul also wrote that..."true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content." (1 Timothy 6:6-10)
On Thanksgiving Day, many of us will sit at tables with amounts of food that folks around the world would think impossible. We'll enjoy apartments and homes with furniture, toilets, running water, electricity, cable or streaming, heat or AC, TV's, sporting events, and friends and family that others wish they had. Stay in the moment, relish in and appreciate it. Be thankful, you don't know what tomorrow holds. | 
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