Today’s post is by Kimberlee Conway Ireton, mother of four and author of The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year and the recently released memoir, Cracking Up: A Postpartum Faith Crisis.
For the beauty of the earth…
For the glory of the skies…
For the love which from our birth…
Over and around us lies…
Lord of all to Thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.
–Folliott S. Pierpoint, 1864
According to Robert Morgan, this well-known hymn is one of only a few Christian songs devoted wholly to giving thanks. “One of the strange things about ‘the attitude of gratitude,'” he notes, “is that we tend to exhibit it in reverse proportion to the number of blessings we receive. The more we have, the less thankful we are.”
Oh, friends, let that not be true of us! Let us not fail to give thanks. Let us not fail to see all that we have to be thankful for.
Let us instead sing out our thanks to the Lord of all—for the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, for God’s unfailing love that surrounds us from our first breath to our final one.
May we be a people who see the manifold gifts, name them one by one like the beads on a rosary, and offer up a constant hymn of grateful praise to the Giver of all good gifts.
For red leaves on trees and scattered over sidewalks
For gray skies— but no rain
For wind bowing birch boughs
For hands to write with
For a clean kitchen at the end of this day
For warm sweaters
For a cozy blanket and a book
For shared meals, good food, and laughter
Lord of all, to Thee I raise this my hymn of grateful praise.
May your Thanksgiving, friends, be full of thanks giving, which always leads to joy.