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How to Talk to Your Left-Wing Family Member About Thanksgiving at Thanksgiving

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Advice columns abound instructing leftists on how to endure the misery of conversing with conservative relatives at Thanksgiving. The genre has become a holiday tradition. The L.A. Times outlined “what to do if your crazy right-wing uncle comes to Thanksgiving.” The New York Times explained “How to have a conservation with your crazy [conservative] uncle over the holidays.” Mother Jones warned, “You won’t change your cranky conservative uncle in one dinner conversation.” Someone seems cranky, but I don’t think it’s your conservative uncle.

The articles always run in one direction, preparing leftists for their annual interaction with a conservative. One rarely, if ever, sees a think piece bracing conservatives to deal with their crazy leftist nieces. What would be the need? Politics might be religion for the Left, but conservatives understand there is more to life than politics. Besides, we live in a leftist culture. We encounter leftism every time we turn on a screen. We understand their arguments better than they understand ours, and we don’t need to spoil our dinner with banal bickering over politicians.

For the Left, Thanksgiving is about politics; for the Right, politics is about thanksgiving. The different approaches to holiday conversation come from opposing views of politics. The leftist vision of politics as a matter of rights begets an attitude of grievance and entitlement. If ”the political is the personal,” as the radicals of the 1960s insisted, then all personal interactions must take on an activist agenda. As GQ told its left-wing audience, “It’s your civic duty to ruin Thanksgiving by bringing up Trump this Turkey Day,” urging them to “consider making life HELL for a few of your relatives.”

The conservative vision regards politics more as a matter of gratitude than entitlement—duty over rights. We have inherited so much: a wonderful country, a culture of freedom and abundance, even our life itself, earned through no effort of our own but bequeathed as a gift from our forefathers. The leftist unease at Thanksgiving represents an unease with thanksgiving more generally. Revisionist attacks on our Pilgrim forefathers at Plymouth express a fundamental ingratitude for the country they gave us.

In certain leftist circles, it has become fashionable to refer to Thanksgiving as the ”National Day of Mourning” to commemorate rather than celebrate alleged Puritan crimes against defenseless Native Americans. This anti-historical narrative commits a grave injustice to both the English and the Indians: it robs the Pilgrims of their virtue and the Indians of their dignity. Worst of all, the revisionism fuels the grievance politics that ails our nation four centuries after the landing of the Mayflower. (Read more from “How to Talk to Your Left-Wing Family Member About Thanksgiving at Thanksgiving” HERE)

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This Thanksgiving, Remember Who Grants the Blessings We Take for Granted

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Perhaps we need a little more Thanksgiving and little less Black Friday to cure what is ailing our culture. Perhaps the best way to return God’s gift to our generations of unprecedented wealth and convenience is to focus on the “day of public humiliation and prayer,” as George Washington conceived the first national Thanksgiving, rather than the day of national indulgence.

As a nation, we may have turned away from God, but God sure has not turned away from us. Despite the infinite social and political problems in this country, God continues to bless us with an extraordinary level of bounty and prosperity that would shock our founding leaders, who believed their relative abundance showed a need for a national thanksgiving.

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge noted in his annual Thanksgiving message, “An abundant prosperity has overspread the land.” He exhorted the nation to use the abundance to please the giver of that bounty and to lift our spiritual state to equal our physical one. “We shall do well to accept all these favors and bounties with a becoming humility, and dedicate them to the service of the righteous cause of the Giver of all good and perfect gifts,” wrote the quiet and humble 30th president. “As the nation has prospered let all the people show that they are worthy to prosper by rededicating America to the service of God and man.”

As we stand here today, nearly a century later, nobody would wish to live in that era, which Coolidge later referred to as one of “comfort” where “wealth is almost incalculable.” Most people didn’t even have the full bathroom amenities of hot piped water, a bathtub, shower, or a flush toilet in their homes, yet they were happy with their state of being. Why? Because as Coolidge observed in his 1928 Thanksgiving proclamation, the spiritual wealth of the nation grew commensurate with its physical wealth:

Our fields have been abundantly productive; our industries have flourished; our commerce has increased; wages have been lucrative, and comfort and contentment have followed the undisturbed pursuit of honest toil. As we have prospered in material things, so have we also grown and expanded in things spiritual. Through divine inspiration we have enlarged our charities and our missions; we have been imbued with high ideals which have operated for the benefit of the world and the promotion of the brotherhood of man through peace and good will.

Today, the opposite is true. As our spiritual wealth and healthy family life decline precipitously, God continues to bless us with unparalleled material wealth as a nation that makes the advances of the 1920s seem like a period of destitution and scarcity. Thus, any excuse we have for our troubles can certainly not be blamed on God’s open hand. We have every reason to succeed now as a nation, at least from a physical standpoint.

Even years before the era of Black Friday, where the most unfathomable high-tech comforts of life would become available at a cheap cost in a dizzying array of choices, former Russian President Boris Yeltsin taught us American abundance in a local Houston supermarket. On September 16, 1989, Boris Yeltsin made a high-profile visit to Houston’s Johnson Space Center. However, it wasn’t the amazing space technology that impressed him about America and crushed his will to continue pursuing communism in his home country. It was an unscheduled visit to Randall’s supermarket that shocked him, according to his autobiography.

Yeltsin, then a high-ranking Soviet official, reportedly “roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement” and told those around him that if Russian supermarkets looked like this, “there would be a revolution.” He later wrote of his experience: “When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people.”

What Yeltsin saw in just one local supermarket was a much a greater abundance than what was celebrated in the first Thanksgiving in 1621 – by a factor of a million.

The asymmetry between America and the rest of the world in terms of choices and abundance in food, cars, and other products is still evident today. In fact, even our homeless vagrant population in San Francisco has iPhones that they use to effectively barter goods, according to a recent report by the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald.

We have so much food in this country that we don’t know what to do with it. According to the USDA, farm output grew by 170 percent between 1948 and 2015, “even as the amount of labor and land (two major inputs) used in farming declined by about 75 percent and 24 percent, respectively.” Earlier this year, America’s dairy surplus reached a record high with 1.4 billion pounds of cheese. Last year, the USDA reported a 2.5 billion-pound surplus of meat.

More recently, we have witnessed the oil and natural gas miracle of America, as we become the global energy superpower. Contrary to the socialist principle of scarcity, God is constantly renewing the world, such that the more oil and gas we produce, the more we find. The U.S. has an estimated 310 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, more than Saudi Arabia, and the numbers keep growing every year. Those estimates have jumped over 30 percent in just a decade, even though we have already extracted over 30 billion barrels during that period.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced that American crude oil production had hit an all-time record of 12.8 million barrels per day (bpd) in November. That is an astounding 43 percent increase in production in just three years. Our oil exports have grown 30-fold over the past five years.

We are also the global leader in natural gas production. The EIA predicts that U.S. liquified natural gas exports will increase 72 percent this year over last year’s impressive showing. In petroleum production combined with “other liquids” production, total U.S. production is projected to hit 20.73 million bpd during the fourth quarter of this year, according to the EIA. That is 67 percent and 83 percent more than Saudi Arabia and Russia respectively. Just seven years ago, those countries were producing more than us. Through 2040, the U.S. is expected to account for 75 percent of the global growth in oil production and 40 percent of the growth in natural gas.

Indeed, God’s blessings are growing faster than we can harvest them. However, His blessings are also growing faster than our spirits can use them for the good. The age-old story of spurning God when we are fat and happy was portended in the Bible – “Jeshurun[a] grew fat and kicked; filled with food, they became heavy and sleek. They abandoned the God who made them and rejected the Rock their Savior” (Deuteronomy 32:15).

That is the true lesson of Thanksgiving. It’s easy to turn to God in a time of need. After all, there are no atheists in a foxhole. What man struggles with most, however, is keeping God in his life during a time of bounty and prosperity. As the sagacious President Coolidge said in his 1923 Thanksgiving proclamation, “We have been a most blessed people. We ought to be a most thankful people.” Yet the number of people who don’t believe in God or don’t attend church has skyrocketed over the past decade. As such, many people don’t even know who to thank.

That we are so pampered with luxury and convenience has turned our society away from family and godly values and has reared an entire generation on unvarnished narcissism and selfishness. Moreover, as we remain personally wealthy and indulgent, we remain apathetic to the injustices around us in our broken political and legal system, like the citizens of Rome in the generations preceding its fall. We have let our guard down because we forgot we need a guard and we forgot that God is the ultimate granter of those comforts we take for granted.

Consequently, everything wrong with our society, culture, and government is not because of God’s punishment but because His immense blessings of divine providence, filtered through our corrupted souls, have turned into divine judgement. God has given us everything we could possibly want, but because our spirituality as a society has been attenuated, His very blessings from His just ways have been used for crooked and profligate purposes. As it says in Hosea 14:9, “Who is wise? Let them realize these things. Who is discerning? Let them understand. The ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them.”

As we thank God for our unfathomable level of physical abundance, we must remember that while only He can deliver material prosperity, only we can salvage our spiritual prosperity by returning His favors and turning back to Him and His ways. Thus, while we, as a civilization, thank God for His unparalleled blessings, we should oblige ourselves to be worthy of those blessings, lest his endless patience run out. As the wise President Coolidge once said, “If at any time our rewards have seemed meager, we should find our justification for Thanksgiving by carefully comparing what we have with what we deserve.” (For more from the author of “This Thanksgiving, Remember Who Grants the Blessings We Take for Granted” please click HERE)

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Studies Show How Families Really Act During Thanksgiving

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Since President Trump’s election in 2016, far-left activists have been pushing their progressive followers into disrupting Thanksgiving dinner by arguing with their conservative family members over the current political issues.

Last year, The New York Times profiled ways for liberals to argue with their conservative family members at the dinner table, an advice column quickly outdone by Eater asserting that people are morally obligated to debate racist Trump supporters before asking them to pass the gravy. Earlier this month, Joy Reid of MSNBC laid out detailed instructions on ways to discuss the current Democratic Party witch hunt known as the impeachment inquiry at the Thanksgiving table. . .

So, do Americans by and large engage in these kinds of political skirmishes over the Thanksgiving dinner table, at least the kind that Joy Reid envisions – enlightened progressives schooling their ignorant family members about Orange Man Bad’s sexism and racism?

Studies actually show that few Americans argue on Thanksgiving; they prefer to practice that age-old axiom “agree to disagree” as they enjoy another slice of that delicious pecan pie Uncle Roscoe and Auntie Carol made from scratch.

“In reality, very few Americans actually fight about politics on Thanksgiving,” notes Abraham Gutman of The Philadelphia Inquirer. “A 2017 HuffPost/YouGov survey found that only 3% of Americans said that they are ‘very likely,’ and 8% are “somewhat likely,” to get into a political argument with family members during Thanksgiving dinner. The result held at 3% for people who expected both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton supporters to attend the dinner, though 20% said they are ‘somewhat likely’ to argue.” (Read more from “Studies Show How Families Really Act During Thanksgiving” HERE)

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Teens Steal Plane on Thanksgiving and Successfully Land Before Getting Caught

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While most teens were recovering from a turkey coma and spending time with loved ones, a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old in northeast Utah stole a small plane on Thursday and took it for a short flight before safely landing it and being arrested.

The single-engine propeller airplane was stolen from a private airstrip in Jensen, the Uintah County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Facebook.

“This morning the teens gained access to a tractor and drove it to the air strip in Jensen, where they stole a fixed-wing, single engine light sport aircraft,” the statement read. “The plane was witnessed flying very low along US-40 near Gusher, Uintah County, about 32 miles west of Jensen.”

The statement added that the boys were planning on flying more west to Wasatch Front, but instead turned around and landed at the Vernal Regional Airport, about 15 miles from where they went airborne.

According to Reuters, the teens live in a group home in the Wasatch Front — a metropolitan region including the state capital, Salt Lake City. The sheriff’s office says they were visiting friends in Jensen. (Read more from “Teens Steal Plane on Thanksgiving and Successfully Land Before Getting Caught” HERE)

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Things I Am Thankful for That Will Annoy Liberals

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. . .I am thankful that Donald Trump is president, most of all because that means Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit is not president. I could stop here and end this column, but my editors insist on a higher word count. . .

I am thankful for a couple of senators who used to drive me up the wall. In the last couple years, Mitch McConnell completed his unlikely transformation from Yerlte the RINO Turtle into the Judicial Avenger who vanquished Merrick Garland and confirmed Kegger Kavanaugh. He’s skillfully tormented the Democrats and is in the midst of packing our court with a bunch of actual judges as opposed to a crowd of pinko robed activists. This is everything we dreamed of for decades and it’s happening. . .

I am thankful the Paul Ryan is gone, having hopped the train to Failuretown, Population: Paul Ryan. Not that we would notice that he vanished. The only time we ever heard from the ex-Speaker was when he was clutching pearls over something Trump said. I wish he was useless, because that would’ve been a huge improvement. The loss of the House was largely his fault. I eagerly await his upcoming book, 50 Shades of Meh. . .

I am thankful that the Democrats have apparently learned nothing from 2006, where they pulled the same scam they pulled this year and elected a bunch of so-called moderates from moderate districts. Sure, they also elected a bunch of goofs who look like the commie weirdos who hung out at the Che Cafe back in the day at UC San Diego, but the ones who took seats from the GOP were all GOP Lite. . .

I am thankful for Donald Trump. Yeah, I know I already said that, but I’m really, really glad he won. Can you imagine the living hell we be enduring if that hideous harpy was president? If she had won, Bill Kristol would be happy and his cabins would all be booked, but I always expected conservatism to do more than just be a get-rich scheme for political parasites. (Read more from “Things I Am Thankful for That Will Annoy Liberals” HERE)

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Student Groups Claim Thanksgiving Is ‘Celebration’ of ‘Ongoing Genocide.’ History Says LOL

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The progressive war against American traditions continues on America’s college campuses. The Thanksgiving holiday is under attack for being associated with “genocide.”

The University of Oregon’s Native American Law Students Association and the Native American Student Union are hosting an event titled, “Thanks But No Thanks-giving: Decolonizing an American Holiday,” Kenneth Nelson reports for Campus Reform. The event seeks to teach students how they can be grateful “while raising our critical consciousness and identifying ways to decolonize the holiday.”

From the event description:

Millions of families gather together every year to celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States. Many Americans do not grow up thinking much of the history behind the holiday. The main messages are that of gratitude, food, and family; however, Thanksgiving is, foundationally speaking, a celebration of the ongoing genocide against native peoples and cultures across the globe. In collaboration with the Native American Student Association (NASU), we will focus on ways in which we can continue to show gratitude while raising our critical consciousness and identifying ways to decolonize the holiday.

Thanksgiving,”foundationally speaking,” is not a celebration of genocide. The first Thanksgiving meal was shared between Plymouth, Mass., colonists and Wampanoag Indians, giving thanks for God’s provision and the Indians’ help in teaching the struggling colonists how to survive.

Here’s a short history, courtesy of the History Channel:

In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, carrying 102 passengers—an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World. After a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River. One month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, as they are now commonly known, began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth.

Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Indian who greeted them in English. Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.

In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s “first Thanksgiving”—although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time—the festival lasted for three days. While no record exists of the historic banquet’s exact menu, the Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow wrote in his journal that Governor Bradford sent four men on a “fowling” mission in preparation for the event, and that the Wampanoag guests arrived bearing five deer. Historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods. Because the Pilgrims had no oven and the Mayflower’s sugar supply had dwindled by the fall of 1621, the meal did not feature pies, cakes or other desserts, which have become a hallmark of contemporary celebrations.

The Thanksgiving holiday is literally a celebration of “one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.” But progressive iconoclasts need to rewrite the history of great American traditions to advance an ideology of oppression that demands government action to address perceived inequalities. So Thanksgiving must be rewritten to be a problematic celebration of “genocide” that Americans should feel bad about.

No thanks. (For more from “Student Groups Claim Thanksgiving Is ‘Celebration’ of ‘Ongoing Genocide.’ History Says LOL” please click HERE)

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Watch: College Students Say Thanksgiving Is ‘Racist,’ Give Hilarious Excuses to Support Narrative

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By The Blaze. Campus Reform correspondent Josiah Tejada visited the University of Oregon campus to interview students ahead of the university hosting a Thanksgiving-centric event titled, “Thanks But No Thanks-giving.”

The event, according to the outlet, “labeled the holiday as a ‘celebration’ of ‘ongoing genocide,’” and aimed to make its attendees more “culturally aware.” . . .

All was not a total loss, however: Several of the respondents admitted that they didn’t believe the holiday is a racist one, and some copped to simply appreciating the holiday because they have the freedoms to enjoy sharing a good, home-cooked meal with their families. (Read more from “Watch: College Students Say Thanksgiving Is ‘Racist,’ Give Hilarious Excuses to Support Narrative” HERE)

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Is Thanksgiving ‘Racist’?

By Campus Reform. . .To find out what students at the University of Oregon had to say about this topic, Campus Reform Oregon Campus Correspondent Josiah Tejada asked a number of students if Thanksgiving is “racist” or a “celebration” of genocide.

“There’s definitely a racist history to Thanksgiving and that should probably definitely be addressed more in education,” one student said. Another student told Campus Reform, “the whole concept with, like, taking land and assigning a value to it through cost is, like, it was different through European cultures.”

Yet another student characterized Turkey Day as “racist,” because “we’re celebrating taking away land from Natives.”

“It doesn’t have to be not celebrated, but if we can change it to instead of feeding ourselves maybe feeding the natives or donating to natives. Do we really need a giant feast?” one student opined. (Read more from “Is Thanksgiving ‘Racist’?” HERE)

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Here’s the One NFL Player Who Kneeled During the Anthem on Thanksgiving

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New York Giants defensive end Olivier Vernon was the only NFL player to kneel during the national anthem in a Thanksgiving game Thursday.

Vernon took a knee right before his team took on the Washington Redskins in the Thursday night game. No other players demonstrated during the anthem.

It also appears no players kneeled during the day’s two previous games, which saw the Minnesota Vikings defeat the Detroit Lions and the Los Angeles Chargers win against the Dallas Cowboys.

(Read more from “Here’s the One NFL Player Who Kneeled During the Anthem on Thanksgiving” HERE)

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Trump Pardons Thanksgiving Turkeys, Can’t Resist Making Joke About Obama at the Same Time

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President Donald Trump on Tuesday continued the presidential tradition of pardoning a turkey ahead of Thanksgiving, granting a reprieve to a bird named Drumstick and landing a jab against his predecessor in the process.

“I’m pleased to report that unlike millions of other turkeys at this time of year, Drumstick has a very, very bright future ahead of him,” he said.

The lighthearted ceremony at the White House Rose Garden included a joke at the expense of his predecessor, according to NBC News.

Trump began by explaining what will become of Drumstick and an alternate who will also be spared the dinner table on Thursday, Wishbone.

“Upon being pardoned, Drumstick and his friend Wishbone will live out their days at Gobblers Rest, beautiful place,” he said. “It’s custom built, it’s an enclosure on the campus of Virginia Tech.”

At that exhibit, Trump said the birds will “join Tater and Tot, the two turkeys pardoned last year by President Obama.”

Pivoting to the previous administration, Trump noted that he has been “very active in overturning a number of the executive actions” enforced during the Obama administration.

That pattern, however, will not extend to the poultry pardons, Mediaite reported.

“I have been informed by the White House counsel’s office that Tater and Tot’s pardons cannot under any circumstance be revoked.”

Trump concluded that the turkeys spared a year ago can “rest easy” under a new administration.

As The Western Journal reported, Drumstick and Wishbone were nominated for the pardon by Carl Wittenburg, whose family raised them.

Ahead of the ceremony, he explained some of the characteristics that made them stand out among the roughly 80 birds in their flock.

Wittenburg said he paid attention to “their character, their temperament, their showmanship and how they looked strutting their stuff.”

Most important, he added, is the bird’s ability to “handle the show.”

The White House posted a Twitter poll seeking the public’s input on which turkey Trump chose for the pardon.

Drumstick, who won the survey despite Wishbone’s last-minute public appearance at the White House briefing room Tuesday, behaved admirably during the ceremony. Trump also gave himself high marks.

“I feel so good about myself doing this,” he said before issuing the pardon. (For more from the author of “Trump Pardons Thanksgiving Turkeys, Can’t Resist Making Joke About Obama at the Same Time” please click HERE)

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This Thanksgiving, Thank God for Little Things — Even the Fact That You Can Breathe

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Have you ever thanked God that you can breathe? I have. Lots of times. No, I haven’t been water-boarded — not yet anyway. Last March, I came down with a nasty case of pneumonia, mostly in my left lung. I’d had it before, and thought I knew the ropes: three weeks of hack, cough, spit, sleep, repeat. And powerful antibiotics.

A trip to Urgent Care confirmed the diagnosis, but unlike my earlier experience, the antibiotics didn’t make any difference. My symptoms got worse. The ribs on my left side started to hurt like crazy. I thought that maybe I’d fractured my ribs from all the coughing. Another trip to Urgent Care and another chest x-ray ruled that out, so I tried another antibiotic.

Still, nothing. I kept getting worse. After almost a week of this, I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without stopping every few steps. Then, I could hardly walk at all without losing my breath. Finally, I started to hear choir music, which no one else could hear.

For my wife Ginny, this was one symptom too many. She dragged me to the emergency room, where a doctor ordered a CAT scan and discovered something much worse than pneumonia. I had pleural effusion (I’d never heard of it either), in which sticky, fibrous fluid fills the chest cavity outside the lung, causing the lung to stick to your insides. That’s not supposed to happen.

Thus began a two-month ordeal, including two-weeks in the hospital, ICU, surgery and ten hours under general anesthesia, a harrowing thirty-minute ordeal after surgery when I thought I was suffocating, more needles than my grandmother kept in her pin cushion, three, centimeter-thick tubes sticking out of my left side and draining blood and clear fluid into clear plastic containers, and heavy opiates that took more time to quit than I’d spent in the hospital. And a Foley catheter.

Each one of us is about three minutes from death every moment of our lives. One misplaced piece of popcorn shrimp or an allergic reaction that seals up your throat and you’re dead before the ambulance arrives. Yet few of us ever to stop and thank God that we can breathe. I do, but only because I know so acutely what it’s like not to be able to, and because I’m reminded it of it every time I yawn and feel residual pain in my left side. Nothing too bad. Just enough to remember.

In our fallen human state, gratitude doesn’t come naturally. Unless we have near-death experiences that remind us of our fragility, we’re more inclined to ingratitude. Sure, most of us have bouts of thankfulness. when something great happens — we graduate from college, get married, get a new house or a big raise. But these are rare events, not nearly common enough to turn gratitude into an automatic habit that can eventually become a virtue.

I’m glad that, as a country, we set aside a day to thank God for His manifold blessings to us. But habits don’t form with one celebration a year. We all need repetition. I need it, and you need it too. The details aren’t complicated. We must bring our blessings to mind, consider the alternatives, and focus on the blessings rather than the alternatives. Unfortunately, our fallenness discourages such mindfulness.

Here’s one suggestion that doesn’t require a deadly disease: make a list of the ordinary things you should be grateful for — health, freedom, shelter, family, friends, pets, breathing — stick it on the side of your computer screen, and thank God every day for these blessings that would otherwise recede into the background.

If you thank God for the small things every day, gratitude will eventually become not merely something you do on special occasions, but a filter that colors every moment of your life. (For more from the author of “This Thanksgiving, Thank God for Little Things — Even the Fact That You Can Breathe” please click HERE)

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