Guest Author - A. Maria Hester, M.D.
Just the mention of the word Thanksgiving brings warm, fuzzy thoughts to the hearts of millions of people. After all, Thanksgiving is a day when friends and families take time out of their busy schedules to celebrate what is real and lasting. The delectable smells of a house at Thanksgiving, the laughter, the smiles, the joy!
In the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives, it is very easy to be overwhelmed with the challenges and duties at hand and lose sight of the fact that we have a tremendous amount to be grateful for.
I know, according to all we see in the movies or read about in magazines, we can never have enough. Have a 2007 luxury BMW? Well, the neighbor down the street has a brand new Porsche and suddenly, that BMW becomes a little less appealing. Now we want what SHE has! Even if we work longer hours or even a second job to one day acquire that new toy, there will still be another one we will soon want.
How many people are really satisfied with what they have? If the advertisers are successful, the answer is probably not many of us. Somehow we have lost focus of what is truly important and we chase after the next thrill or the latest fad.
I propose that we make a resolution to make this Thanksgiving different in some way. By all means, make grand plans with those whom you love and create moments that you will cherish for a lifetime, but let us not forget about those whose Thanksgiving dinner will be just another lonely, painful, meaningless day.
Let us not complain about what we do not have, but let us be truly grateful for what we do have and commit to making that day, and many more, special for other people as well.
Why should you give thanks?
Did you wake up in a warm bed this morning? Millions did not. For a forgotten, yet enormous group of people this morning was ushered in with cold raindrops falling on their heads, intense hunger pangs, or maybe even the brush of a rodent scampering by them.
Do you have food in your refrigerator? Something we take for granted so often is simply having access to food. After all, who can actually fathom the reality that each day tens of thousands of people starve to death? As many times as I have heard this, I still cannot fully grasp this heartbreaking truth. As a Christian, I sometimes fast for spiritual growth. Toward the end of the day I sometimes experience headaches, fatigue, and grumpiness, as well as hunger pangs. As I watch the clock and count down the time until I can put a juicy morsel of food in my mouth, I often think about those people who are experiencing my symptoms on a much greater scale because they have no access to food and have no idea where their next meal will come from. Fasting is a very humbling experience that everyone should try. It really makes you look at life through different lenses.
Do you have friends and family members who love you? So many people around the world are truly alone. Orphans, widows, and just people who find themselves seemingly alone in the world are hoping and praying for love, any love. Are we really too busy with our lives to notice them?
How can we give of ourselves and our resources?
There are opportunities around every corner.
Food For the Poor offers many opportunities to literally save lives with money many of us would never even miss.
For a mere $25 you could give a family 25 chicks or for $125 you could give them 100 chicks. For $90 you could buy a needy family a goat. Wow! Free milk for years. For $100 you could them 3 little pigs. These animals will not cost them much to maintain and they can provide an ongoing source of nutrition and be bred to give the family a constant source of income. Just imagine you could help stop the cries of hungry children. You could help a father bring home needed money to buy clothes for his children. You could help snatch a starving human being from the clutches of pain and despair, yes you! Just go the their site and click on Christmas 2007 Gift Catalog to learn more about these and other ways to change lives.
These are just a few examples of how you can help change the world. I know the task seems insurmountable. There are just too many people in need, but what if? What if you get involved and tell your friends, and they get involved, and they tell their friends and so on. What if you could help start a chain of hope that could save 10, 100, or even 1,000 lives? You do not have to go thru Food for the Poor. You can go thru any agency you desire or even do things on your own to help others.
God only knows what tomorrow will bring for each of us. Today many of us live lives of abundance, have good jobs, plenty of food, and cannot even imagine how our lives could change overnight. Natural disasters of catastrophic proportions do occur as we saw with the Tsunami a few years ago. Economies do fall, like during the Great Depression in America. I challenge each of you to prepare for Thanksgiving a little differently this year. Do something wonderful today so when you sit down and bow your head to thank God for your awesome meal on Thanksgiving Day, you will be comforted knowing that at that very moment, someone is thanking God for you.
