Today (which will be our Friday), in America, is Thanksgiving day (Canada had their Thanksgiving – Jour de l’Action de grâce – back on the second Monday of October).
In Australia we don’t have such a day as a celebration. Pity.
Having lived in the USA for quite a while, we came to appreciate Thanksgiving as a day to reflect on the blessings we enjoy, particularly those that we didn’t earn.
The modern Thanksgiving tradition can be traced back at least as far as late 16th century Europe. I don’t know whether English churches still celebrate it, but growing up there, I remember attending & participating in Harvest Thanksgiving services in church.
Abraham Lincoln inaugurated the regular American national Thanksgiving in 1863. The date was set as the 4th Thursday in November in 1941, by the US Congress.
But enough of history…
We have so much to be thankful for. From family and friends, to work and business opportunities; living in a place where freedom remains a daily reality; provision of food, clothing and all the advantages of modern life and culture; a standard of living that would have been inconceivable 150 years ago; and much, much more…
Personally, I’m thankful to my wife Sue, who has been and is a consistent support and encourager through tough times and good times; she’s an amazing person, a wise and loving wife, mother and grandmother, an enthusiastic participant in a wide range of activities, and most recently, involved in a medical mission to South America. Above all, Sue has enabled me to remain focused and purposeful in all that I do.
At RealTeam, we’re thankful for the opportunity to serve and help others with the property aspects of their lives; for the many service-providers (including those who are also family members) who cooperate to bring our clients’ plans to fruition; for input from advisors & specialists, and for feedback from clients, all of which helps toward improving RealTeam’s service delivery, and keeping me on track with what we’re striving to accomplish.
Perhaps most of all, we’re thankful for our clients who have made RealTeam not only possible, but an ongoing reality
I’ll finish with this from Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation:
“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that [the gifts of God] should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens… to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.”
– Abraham Lincoln
At RealTeam, we wish you a blessed time over the next few weeks, through what’s thought of in Australia and elsewhere as the “pre-Christmas rush.” I encourage you during this time, to reflect on how many reasons we have, to be thankful!
