Thanksgiving is for me a wonderful excuse for spending a day wrestling with God to receive from Him the blessing of hearing from Him more fully what He has revealed in His Holy Scriptures. Sermon preparation usually takes me about eight hours. Sometimes I cut it a bit shorter. Sometimes it goes longer. It usually takes at least 4 to 6 hours before I am content with the outline that has developed. Then only another two or three or four hours are needed for actually writing the sermon, proof reading it, and printing it. Sometimes the outline is exactly the same as the last time that I preached the text, but the sermon content has expanded. My immersion into the text has become deeper. I have been richly blessed beyond measure. Then I am privileged to preach it and hear it yet again.
Today, after preaching today's text, I felt full and content. The meal that my wife prepared was waiting, but I felt full. She prepared a wonderful meal. It was truly delicious and I enjoyed it immensely. Yet it seemed unnecessary after the feast that the Lord had prepared and fed to me. Not only the message that flowed from the text, but also, and even more satisfying, was the Feast of the Eucharist (Thanksgiving).
The meal that my wife prepared was truly wonderful, too, but it was primarily for my flesh. It was truly cause for giving thanks, too, both to my wife and to the Lord. This year she purchased and prepared a free range turkey. The stuffing was organic, with her added fixings of mixed nuts, cranberries, homemade turkey stock, celery, carrots, onions, garlic cloves, and more! She made sweet potatoes, prepared apples and grapes, and more. The only junk food was the croissants that she purchased at Sam’s Club (with many scary ingredients, but tasty).
Thankfully, even more cause for thanksgiving, my wife understands fully what I mean when I say that the Lord’s banquet is what made the day. Even though I do not believe that I have ever had a more wonderful turkey and other culinary delights, the Lord’s banquet completely satisfied me.
Now, this blessed eventide, I am pleased that the sermon has been uploaded and the turkey has been put away in the refrigerator, and we will enjoy my wife’s labors for perhaps as long as a week. How wonderful to have these treasures upon which to feast our palates! Moreover, even regarding the Lord’s feast we have His marvelous promise:
Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old. (Matthew 13:52)
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