Thanksgiving Thoughts

This has been an incredibly hard year for our family. We have had many things that have happened, that have caused us much stress and financial difficulty. My roof needed to be replaced, both cars broke down, and all kinds of medical problems and expenses. We have also had many blessings along the way. Our first child has had a great start in school. Our second child is doing well in Pre-K, and our third is doing great learning words.

My “day job” when I’m not doing side consulting work has been stressful. It’s not easy being an integration test engineer with multiple electromechanical and pneumatic systems that all have embedded software and talk to each other over a data bus. Even with that, I feel like my day job has been the opportunity of a lifetime, and I find time to reflect at the great amount of responsibility I’ve been given.

In all these difficult times for our family, one thing that I find to be comforting as a Christian is the verse below:

Luke 10:19 Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (ESV)

I remember first hearing this verse at a midnight devotional time in Bible college. For those who don’t know, independent Baptist colleges like to get you up very early, and make you stay up at 10pm for learning something from the Bible. I think the idea is to “build character”. Anyways, one evening we had a special guest that spoke to us, and he read these verses. The interesting thing about this passage of Scripture is that the disciples were so amazed at all the things that they could “do”, but Jesus reminded them that the most important thing is that their names were written in Heaven (in other words, celebrate the fact that God forgave them and they were recipients of God’s grace).

I find sometimes I need this reality check. In the middle of all the information overload, work schedules, side business, church, household, children, etc., it is important to remember what really matters. It is important to be thankful for all the blessings of life, and even more so during difficult times.