At the beginning of this month I took a moment in this email to encourage everyone to make this a whole month of gratitude. Well, here we are that the main event: Thanksgiving week. The seven-day countdown begins now.
Between today and next Thursday, I really encourage you take some time each day to pause and be grateful. I have seen a few of you posting things for which you are grateful on Facebook. You could do that, or perhaps you could write out a list of gratitudes in your journal, make it a dinner conversation each night, or come up with another creative way to focus on gratitude this Thanksgiving. A good way to be sure to follow through is to do your gratitude practice at the same time of the day each day and try to connect it to something in your normal routine.
As a way of practicing what I am suggesting, I will share a bit of my gratitude with you here. Today, I thank God for each of you. Truly. This week marks five years since I moved to St. Louis, and so I have been thinking about our time together. We have faced some challenges as a church this year, but we did so by trusting each other and never losing sight of the promise that God is preparing a new path of ministry and growth for us (Jer. 29:11). I am thankful to continue to walk in gratitude and hope as I/we eagerly await what God will do through us in the year ahead!