What These Eyes Have Seen: Thxgiving Thanks #1

I figured with Thanksgiving so close around the corner I would share a wonderful story of the Grace of our Father in heaven. Before I dive to deep into that I wanna first note a few things I love about Thanksgiving.
1) Of course the wonderful meal we get to share with family
2) The football games on...can't go wrong with family, food and football (f3)
3) Family...I love hangin' with my family. This will be my first Thanksgiving with my step mom and step bro...pretty excited about that and also about seeing my other family...let's just say it's "interesting"...
4) When Thanksgiving is over I begin Christmas celebration...Although Santa be a fluke I will continue in my own tradition from college and watch Elf about 37 times a week until Christmas.
5) The most important thing: Being thankful...and that's what this post is about

I reminisced with the students at Ashland Baptist Wednesday on a story of grace that happened to my family. It was Thanksgiving time 1999. Money was short...A big thanksgiving dinner did not seem likely...bills took priority. Having this explained to me helped me swallow this a little more. But I can be thankful w/o a traditional meal right? I thought it would be ok...just difficult to see that time be severed.

About my normal duties as a teenage boy just starting high school I was chasing our cat, Butterscotch, through the living room because he had gotten into something and if my cat got stuff on the carpet it would be my backside cooking instead of turkey. Standing next to the front door, cat in hand, the door bell rings. DING DONG! I opened the door and no one was there...now before you just shrug this off as no big deal you have to understand our front porch was big...front yard, real, real big...you couldn't walk across our front porch without causing a ruckus for three country miles to hear and you couldn't escape the front yard without having felt like you prepped for the Boston Marathon. Knowing this I was beginning to conclude that Superman or Rocket Man had escaped upward without being seen...I know, I know...kind of irrational to think Rocket Man would be able to leave without much racket.

I dismissed all nonsense and looked down...seeing what was a red bag I slammed the door. "MOM!!!! There's a bomb on the porch." My poor Mother, of the paranoid clan, freaked and came to my rescue pushing me and butterscotch backwards and being braving the front door. Now my hero because although I had done the same act it was out of sheer ignorance...my Mother was a regular William Wallace. She looked down, "Jay, that isn't a bomb!" Easing my pain as I had rendered Superman as a true villain to have done such an act.

We brought in the red bag. Un-cinched the string and began to look at what was inside. My Mother closed the bag and began to cry. I was so confused. I began to pull stuff out and inside the bag was a turkey, all the fixins for a dinner and $50...I now knew my Mothers tears were ones of gratefulness and thanksgiving.

To this day we still have no clue who gave us that food. Doesn't matter. Whomever it was, a local neighbor or Superman, God had provided a gracious gift...Give thanks with a grateful heart!

GOD IS GOOD!