Gratitude at Thanksgiving

I know I am behind. Tis the season, right? Also, I have been working really hard at trying to feel gratitude for my life and what I have and lately some days have been easier than others. Then as we were setting up Christmas, I found this written by my grandfather Thanksgiving of 1968. I thought it appropriate to share.

GRATITUDE AT THANKSGIVING

By Lee Franklin Gledhill

Gratitude is the name for a feeling or an emotion. If a person is filled with gratitude, the implication is that he has received something of worth; something that has been proffered voluntarily and has been proffered beyond obligation. 

In this month of all months we speak of gratitude and somehow feel that by speaking the word, expressing the feeling, we have discharged a responsibility and brought into balance our debt for all that has been gathered unto us.

We might enumerate in the following manner the gifts we have received:

We have Life because parents sacrificed, suffered, surmounted problems.

We have Salvation because there was One who was the Light of the World and others followed the Light.

We have Plenty because men tilled the soil; because others risked their security, and because still others have erected machine and edifices.

We have Homes because of the tenderness of mother's love, the fierceness of father's efforts, the cooperation in human aspirations.

We have Learning because there was faith and dissatisfaction and longing.

These thing we have and with then, hopefully, Gratitude.  These gifts, received with gratitude, give joy to the present and great promise of fulfillment in the lives of our children and grandchildren. 

But gratitude is more than just enumeration.

If a person has true gratitude, he is placed in a very special position in relation to the donor.  He obligates himself to give thanks to his God and to those of his fellow men who thrust the gifts upon him. He pledges to hold closely the gifts, nurture them, polish them brightly, and share them with those along the way. 

But most of all he dedicates himself not to the enjoyment of the gifts, but to the assurance that the gifts will always be available to his fellow man tomorrow and in the calendar pages yet unturned. 

Thank you Grandpa for taking the time to share your thoughts so that we may enjoy them and learn from them all these years later.