By Guinn Sweet | sweettalk@mineralwellsindex.com

“What a joyful and pleasant thing it is to be thankful,” as quoted from line 1, page 147, of an old English prayer book of 1662.



What a great Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 24, 2011! I can never expect another which will be better in the near future. My early morning “quiet time” alone with my Heavenly Father revealed to me many of His blessings of the past year.

It all began while Colon was still asleep and I was reading the Sunday school lesson for the following Sunday. It was a scripture from the 42nd Chapter of Job, which outlined the final episode of Job’s experience with pain, hardship, loss of worldly riches and entire family. The bulk of the Book of Job, of course dealt with the accusations and commentary of his friends trying to explain the reasons for Job’s trials, and Job’s response to them.  The main point of that scripture had been the continual verbal “give and take” of Job and his friends, without a request for the Lord’s input. When Job finally stopped talking and started listening, he was overwhelmed with what God had to say.

I began to feel a similar understanding that I need to hush for a while, and listen. How else could I learn how very blessed I am and how much He loves me? The entire day, following my prayer of gratitude for the influence of the Lord in my life, was a revelation, both of the past blessings and the present ones, with the future ones still to be expected and experienced.

One of my first reminiscences was of the loss of a mother, followed by the blessings of being reared by Godly grandparents. Similar to Job’s experience, my loss was the beginnings of eventual gain. The obvious difference was the fact that there was little suffering, at first, in my loss, while his were great and painful. My loss occurred while I was so young (age three), that I couldn’t initially react to the finality of it. I was deeply loved by my grandparents while Job was vilified by his friends/tormentors. I was never accused of bringing upon myself the loss of a irreplaceable mother. Honestly, the pain of the loss occurred much later in life, with the birth of my own children and my deep desire that I, too, would not be taken from them while they were young.  To be honest, sort of, there were times during their teens that I almost wished for that!

But there were sufferings in my life. I was diagnosed with epilepsy when I was about 12 or 13. At the time I was not thankful for it, but later I felt blessed. This was during that time when we who “had fits” were often put in closets, hidden from view, but my grandparents refused to treat me in that manner. Instead, they continued to treat me as “normal” and expected me to do the best that I could. That meant that I also wanted to do a good job with school, sports and any social activity, to prove that I did not belong in a closet.

God blessed me with an unaffected mental capacity in spite of the sometimes abnormal activity in my brain cells. I thank Him for that, even today. He showed me that I was NOT inferior to any one, as far as He was concerned. He continued to bless me with high school and university graduations “with Honor.” He gave me a funny, hard-working husband and five great kids.  However, He chose to take the little red-haired favorite son to His breast when he was just 2 years old. This was another painful time, but one during which He stayed with us as we drew closer to Him. There was encouragement and joy in three little girls who joined our family as a result of his death; whom I probably would not have had if I had not lost him. But the pain was deep. I learned, in having other children, girls at that, that the Lord would make the best decisions for us regarding family and children, if I followed His will.

And now, for the latest, and possibly the greatest blessing for which I am thankful … we have a great home, at no cost to us, we have perfect neighbors in our daughter and her husband, and we are members of a church that has given us a ministry for Him and love from the hearts of other members. Today, I have peace in my heart in spite of some remaining difficulties; but the difficulties are made much easier by the continual assurance of the Holy Spirit that we are not in this trial alone, and like Job, we know that in the final analysis, we are in the bosom of our Heavenly Father and He will continue to bless us in whatever manner He feels is appropriate.

I have often wondered why we are still able to live fruitful lives and why we have outlived most of the other family members of our generation, but I really believe that it’s because we have left something undone and the Lord is determined that we WILL finish our jobs before He lets us out of this place!

P.S.: Oh, another thing good, the Cowboys WON again Thursday … with three seconds to go!