Thanksgiving is coming. By news report, another forty-six million turkeys will be consumed. Calories and memories will remain. As I reflect on Thanksgiving, I am thankful for at least three things, and they come from a rather unusual source. In Genesis 16 Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar had made a mess of God\u2019s plans. Hagar was in the process of running away, when she discovered three things. (1) \u2013 \u201cthe angel of the Lord found her\u201d (Genesis 16:7). (2) God directed her to \u201creturn. . . and submit\u201d (Genesis 16:9) and (3) God was \u201cthe God who sees\u201d (Genesis 16:13). Like Hagar, I am glad God found me. I wasn\u2019t running away, but I wasn\u2019t that easy to find either \u2013 large city, large school, large church, following the, \u201cbe seen and not heard\u201d theory of child raising. Still at age nine, God found me, saved me, and then at age sixteen, called me to serve Him. I\u2019m thankful. I\u2019m also thankful, like Hagar, that God directed and re-directed me. Once God begins to direct us, correction and re-direction is a part of the plan, but I am thankful. Like Hagar, I am also thankful that God could see beyond what I could see. Had I seen where God would lead me, it might have scared me into disbelief. But God knew, I followed, and I am thankful. William Bradford, arriving on the Mayflower, then becoming the first Governor of the Plymouth Colony, wrote: \u201cBeing thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean.\u201d Approaching another Thanksgiving season, I join Hagar in lessons learned and re-learned, and I join Bradford\u2019s pilgrims on my knees in thanksgiving for God\u2019s leadership in my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thanksgiving is coming. By news report, another forty-six million turkeys will be consumed. Calories and memories will remain. As I reflect on Thanksgiving, I am thankful for at least three things, and they come from a rather unusual source. In Genesis 16 Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar had made a mess of God\u2019s plans. Hagar was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}