Thanksgiving 2010

Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving. ~ W.T. Purkiser

One of my chaplains posted this quotation on facebook and I thought it was very insightful. This Thanksgiving has had a significant impact on me, because I realized that it is so easy to take our blessings for granted. Each year we as a society gather together for Thanksgiving and reflect on our blessings and the things we are each thankful for. At least, that is what we should be doing. For some, I'm sure, it's really just about eating a robust meal and falling asleep on the sofa while watching football.

During the past 24 hours 3 families learned that their loved one was lost in the war and won't be home to enjoy a Thanksgiving ever again. We spared one family of having to come to Dover on Thanksgiving day to witness the Dignified Transfer of their son, a fallen US Marine. The flight was delayed in Germany to give the family time to prepare and travel from California to Delaware, which is quite complicated given the volume of air travel that takes place during this holiday weekend. Still, though, they received a notification in the last 24hrs that their son was killed in action. I will meet them tomorrow and stand with them for their son's return home.

Thanksgiving for them will forever be changed and possibly bring with it painful memories for years. I thought deeply about this today and it brought some clarity into my life, which is so often transparent to most of us. We have so much to be eternally thankful for and to count as blessings for God's glory. Instantly, I thought of the breath I just took and then the next. As quickly as I could count them, another one passed. So many things get by us these days that we fail to grasp and understand. Most often they are the simplest of things. A breath, a blink of an eye, a heart beat, or a step. The amazing grace that happens within us, and gives us life to share with others, is going on without our taking notice.

I thought of a certain excerpt from a favorite book of mine that takes inventory of some of our most inherent blessings that we often don't truly think about or understand. They are all part of who we are and give us life. Here's the excerpt The God Memorandum from "The Greatest Miracle In The World" by Og Mandino:

"Are you blind? Does the sun rise and fall without your witness?
No. You can see ... and the hundred million receptors I have placed in your eyes enable you to enjoy the magic of a leaf, a snowflake, a pond, an eagle, a child, a cloud, a star, a rose, a rainbow ... and the look of love. Count one blessing.

Are you deaf? Can a baby laugh or cry without your attention?
No. You can hear ... and the twenty-four thousand fibers I have built in each of your ears vibrate to the wind in the trees, the tides on the rocks, the majesty of an opera, a robin's plea, children at play ... and the words I love you. Count another blessing.

Are you mute? Do your lips move and bring forth only spittle?
No. You can speak ... as can no other of my creatures, and your words can calm the angry, uplift the despondent, goad the quitter, cheer the unhappy, warm the lonely, praise the worthy, encourage the defeated, teach the ignorant ... and say I love you. Count another blessing.

Are you paralyzed? Does your helpless form despoil the land?
No. You can move. You are not a tree condemned to a small plot while the wind and world abuses you. You can stretch and run and dance and work, for within you I have designed five hundred muscles, two hundred bones, and seven miles of nerve fiber all synchronized by me to do your bidding. Count another blessing.

Are you unloved and unloving? Does loneliness engulf you, night and day?
No. No more. For now you know love's secret, that to receive love it must be given with no thought of its return. To love for fulfillment, satisfaction, or pride is no love. Love is a gift on which no return is demanded. Now you know that to love unselfishly is its own reward. And even should love not be returned it is not lost, for love not reciprocated will flow back to you and soften and purify your heart. Count another blessing. Count twice.

Is your heart stricken? Does it leak and strain to maintain your life?
No. Your heart is strong. Touch your chest and feel its rhythm, pulsating, hour after hour, day and night, thirty-six million beats each year, year after year, asleep or awake, pumping your blood through more than sixty thousand miles of veins, arteries, and tubing ... pumping more than six hundred thousand gallons each year. Man has never created such a machine. Count another blessing.

Are you diseased of skin? Do people turn in horror when you approach?
No. Your skin is clear and a marvel of creation, needing only that you tend it with soap and oil and brush and care. In time all steels will tarnish and rust, but not your skin. Eventually the strongest of metals will wear, with use, but not that layer that I have constructed around you. Constantly it renews itself, old cells replaced by new, just as the old you is now replaced by the new. Count another blessing.

Are your lungs befouled? Does your breath of life struggle to enter your body?
No. Your portholes to life support you even in the vilest of environments of your own making, and they labor always to filter life-giving oxygen through six hundred million pockets of folded flesh while they rid your body of gaseous wastes. Count another blessing.

Is your blood poisoned? Is it diluted with water and pus?
No. Within your five quarts of blood are twenty-two trillion blood cells and within each cell are millions of molecules and within each molecule is an atom oscillating at more than ten million times each second. Each second, two million of your blood cells die to be replaced by two million more in a resurrection that has continued since your first birth. As it has always been inside, so now it is on your outside. Count another blessing.

Are you feeble of mind? Can you no longer think for yourself?
No. Your brain is the most complex structure in the universe. I know. Within its three pounds are thirteen billion nerve cells, more than three times as many cells as there are people on your earth. To help you file away every perception, every sound, every taste, every smell, every action you have experienced since the day of your birth, I have implanted, within your cells, more than one thousand billion billion protein molecules. Every incident in your life is there waiting only your recall. And, to assist your brain in the control of your body I have dispersed, throughout your form, four million pain-sensitive structures, five hundred thousand touch detectors, and more than two hundred thousand temperature detectors. No nation's gold is better protected than you. None of your ancient wonders are greater than you.
You are my finest creation.

Within you is enough atomic energy to destroy any of the world's great cities ... and rebuild it.

Are you poor? Is there no gold or silver in your purse?
No. You are rich! Together we have just counted your wealth. Study the list. Count them again. Tally your assets!

You have so much. Your blessings overflow your cup ... and you have been unmindful of them, like a child spoiled in luxury, since I have bestowed them upon you with generosity and regularity.

What rich man, old and sick, feeble and helpless, would not exchange all the gold in his vault for the blessings you have treated so lightly."

I have witnessed so many fallen in these past few months, all miracles in their own rite, posessing the same blessings that are mentioned above. I hope and pray that they used their gifts to the greatest extent, while with us on this earth. As mentioned in the quote at the beginning of this post, it's how we use our blessings that allow us to truly measure our thanksgiving. Those of us that still walk this earth have a chance, everyday, to use the blessings and the gifts that God bestowed upon us. We should be thankful we have today, and lean not on our own understanding, but on the one who created us to direct our paths for tomorrow and the days He has planned for us. May we all be grateful and use our gifts to make a difference in this world, leaving it better than we found it.

I like to think about each one of the heroes I've met here at Dover in that sense. That they left this world a little better than they found it. Even if they changed one life along the way, that's enough for us all to be thankful for.