"THANKFUL TO PRESS ONWARD"

Hello again, Friends!  Pretty soon we're gonna be eating turkey and stuffing!  That's enough to get me excited!

As we celebrate Thanksgiving this November, I want to talk a bit about being thankful.

I have found that as I age, my thankfulness changes quite a bit.  In my youth, I took a lot of things for granted, because I'd never known anything different.

I was healthy and very agile. Adventure was my middle name!  I was always on the move, still only when asleep.

I can't even remember what I was thankful for long ago.  But I'm sure it was nothing like now.

As we age and grow, our bodies tend to weaken and they don't operate the same way. The eyes, ears, and pretty much everything gets dim and slows down.

So, what's left of our senses and agility, we are totally thankful for!

"A good day," doesn't necessarily mean everything's gone our way. It just might mean, we are able to get out of bed or are able to accomplish things that are now a challenge in our elder years.

But, I guess you have to have seen both sides, in order to see the difference.

So at 73 years old, I'm thankful for a lot of things I never dreamed I'd be so thankful for.

I am reminded of the great movie, Schindler's List.  If you haven't seen it, you need to, its a true story.  It's about a man that saved the life of 1300 jews, back during WW11.

Oskar Schindler was his name and he was a Natzi. He owned a factory and most of his employees were Jewish.  So when the soviet government decided to kill all the jews, Schindler hid his employees, because it behooved his factory to keep them.

Over time, word secretly spread among the jews about a man that was helping them escape the gas chambers.  More and more people pleaded for his assistance for their friends and families.

Oskar would have been killed on the spot if he was caught smuggling jews to safety.

But as time went on, and in  working with them to save their lives, his heart softened.  They became human beings to him.  He became attached to many of them.

At the end of the movie, although it shows people's tremendous gratitude and thankfulness to him, it ends on a terribly sad note for Oskar Schindler.  People were hugging him and saying goodbye,  but he was crying profusely.

He kept saying over and over again, " I could have saved so many more, I could have saved so many more children, so many more people, if I'd only realized. I'm so sorry, I could have saved more."

Friends, I can't help relating to Mr. Schindler, in some ways.  Mathew 9: 35 - 38, Jesus said, "The harvest is great, but the laborers are few."

I thank God that I am still able to assist Him in any way He sees fit.  Let's praise and thank Him for the ability to press on for His kingdom, come what may.

Have a great weekend and enjoy this song, "Power of Your Love."

Charlotte Ann