On Thanksgiving Day in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and thirty, my dad was born.  I’m completely sure my paternal grandmother already had the holiday meal prepared and, on the table, before she left for the hospital for his delivery.  He was the caboose kid with two older brothers who served in WW2 and one sister who kept him straightened out toward behaving.  She also packed around a baseball bat to defend her little brother from any and all potential bullies on the way to school.

This year, dad will celebrate his 93rd birthday on the 27th.  Even when his day does not fall on Turkey Day, I spend lots of time thanking the Lord for my dad year-round anyway.  He has been a preacher since he was 16 and a pastor since he was 19.  He followed up those years of pastoral ministry with eight years of missionary adventure in Israel. He’s quite a guy.  Our mother passed away 21 years into their marriage and he and our second mom have been married 49 years! 

My thanksgivings ALWAYS begin with gratitude for my family heritage.  I’ve been blessed so deeply.  My life verse is Luke 12:48. Look it up.  Especially the middle part.

Our final lesson in this book comes from Psalm 65.  This is described as a Psalm of David.  Either David wrote it, or it was dedicated to him and penned by someone else to be used in worship with a choir.  It is a song with three four-verse “stanzas” and a “tag” verse at the end. 

Many of the individual Psalms begin with a shout of praise and crescendo all the way to the big finale.  This 65th Psalm begins with silence.  As a musician, I can appreciate the RESTS in music.  Many rests are most memorable when I have forgotten to rest and been singing or playing a one note SOLO with a huge “oh my goodness” at the shock of it all. 

Silence is what I truly believe I will feel the moment I actually get to see Jesus and be personally present in that majestic throne room.  I think that the only words that might leak out would be “thank You Lord.”  My tears will leak out first, I’m certain of that. 

This Psalm Song 65 presents many of the reasons we have to say thanks to the Lord.  God is the “Hearer” of our prayers.  God is the “Forgiver” of our sins.  When we choose to follow God, He chooses to allow that belief to be the reason we get to live with Him forever in Heaven.  God is the One Who “Brings us Near.”  God will be the best “Land Lord” ever.  We dwell rent free because of the shed blood of Jesus.

His “house” is His “temple” or dwelling place.  In The Father’s House, worship is the number one house rule.  He answers us in righteousness.  He is the God of our salvation.  The ends of the earth and the most distant seas trust in their Creator.  So should we!  God is the Mountain Maker.  He is the Wind that stirs the waters and the Word that causes them to be still. 

Sunrises and Sunsets surely must be some of His greatest joyful delights.  To begin and end each day with the artwork of white clouds and blue sky over green grass and shiny oceans is a fathomless canvas.  To swap the sun and the moon over part of the earth and feel the certainty of the regular return of both brings man celestial comfort.  I think God made the world to turn in such a way that somewhere, ALL the time, some groups of people are awake and up and going while the rest are asleep.  God never stops reaching out to us.  

He is the “Flooder of Fields” with much needed rain at the right times.  His streams NEVER run dry.  His Son is called Living Word and Living Water.  Like a wise and weathered gardener, He makes furrows to hold the planted seed after allowing the land to lie fallow and then filling it with appropriate nutrients. He is the Shower and He is the Growth Blesser. 

Our paths and pastures drip with fatness.  Even the wilderness is fruitful because of His hand.  Some days, it DOES seem like the winds and lands call to us in literal song.  The flocks dot the hillside and graze in green pastures beside still waters.  Pristine.  Protected.  Provided for daily.  The crop is abundant. 

Now, I would like for you to read this lesson once again and let the fields be your own life.  Think of the ways God has blessed you and how you would not even be here were it not for His grace and glory and mercy and provision and forgiveness and joy and watering and plowing and digging and weeding and planting and I am just going to leave this sentence without a period if that’s ok with you…and even if it isn’t…