Strip away all the commercialized junk that has been attached to one of our biggest holidays (like a pilot fish eating scum off a whale’s belly) Thanksgiving is truly a wonderful time of reflecting on the importance of family, heritage, and God’s grace to us. For the first time in a long time, I am going to be without family on Thursday and even though I will be able to play in the 3rd annual turkey bowl (football game) and eat food with friends from church, it really isn’t even a close third to spending the day with family.

With that being said, Charlie, Margaret Ann, Katherine, Lenkie, Janie, Sandra, Mark, Elliott, I love you and miss you very much. I am SO thankful to have brothers and sisters that aren’t perfect, but we DO love each other and for that, I am blessed. To my children, Andie, Shelby, and Caleb, you truly are my GREATEST accomplishments. To be able to be your dad has been the greatest gift God has given me on this earth. To all my nieces and nephews, Lisa E. Matthew E. Amy, Jeanie, Emily, Sarah, Andrew, Shari, Paul, Stephen, Amanda, (I have MANY MANY more), I love you all and I am proud to be a part of such a large, wonderful family!!

God, I want to give you thanks for my family. I pray You will continue to bless us and keep us for Your purpose. Use us as You see fit, keep us in Your house. Amen!

There are so many facets to King David’s life that reveals the worst and best of what our relationship with God can be. I Samuel, chapter 27:1 states “Then David said ^[a]to himself, “Now I will perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than ^[b]to escape into the land of the Philistines. Saul then will despair of searching for me anymore in all the territory of Israel, and I will escape from his hand.”

When David focused on God, he prospered, he thrived, even among his enemies. But when David took his eyes off God and focused on Saul, it drove him deeper into sin; David went to live with the Philistine, the very people that he had fought against for mocking God. We all do the same thing David did. We all tend to retreat into our sin when we focus on ourselves, or the people around us, instead of focusing on God. Why?  For me, I know that when my focus is on God, I am acutely aware of the grace and mercy that is extended to me on a daily basis because of my sin and God’s righteousness. This awareness makes it very easy for me to extend grace and mercy to the people around me, to be more loving to them because of the love shown to me from God. But when I am not focused on God, I am only aware of unattainable expectations (usually perceived, not real), false impressions or emotions (gossip, he said she said stuff), and anger.

Lord, help me to stay focused on you. I want You to be my filter for the rest of this world. I want to see my neighbors, my coworkers, my children, and my wife THROUGH You.

This was my daily devotional this morning, 11 November, Veterans Day. This particular passage was penned over 70 years ago by a man considered to be one of the most brilliant authors of all time, CS Lewis:

“If not the greatest evil, yet war is a great evil. Therefore we should all like to remove it if we can. But every war leads to another war. The removal of war must therefore be attempted. We must increase by propaganda the number of Pacifists in each nation until it becomes great enough to deter that nation from going to war.” This seems to me wild work. Only liberal societies tolerate Pacifists. In the liberal society, the number of Pacifists will either be large enough to cripple the state as belligerent, or not. If not, you have done nothing. If it is large enough, then you have handed over the state which does tolerate Pacifism to its totalitarian neighbour who does not. Pacifism of this kind is taking the straight road to a world in which there will be no Pacifists. -from “Why I Am Not a Pacifist” (The Weight of Glory)