want to thank You for standing be side their beds through sickness and for guiding the minds and hands of the doctors. And for the angels that You send to guard them as they play. We thank You not only for the young but also for the wise smiles and quiet joy of Your older chil dren—the ones who have already cut paths through the thickets where we often walk—the ones who have learned the lessons of faith and pass them along to us. We are thankful for those who have grown old in Your service and can show us the stars by which we find our way to the Golden City. Without them our faith would often waver and without their prayers our strength would fail. They opened the Bible for us, read it to us when we were young and taught us from it as we grew. Yes, it’s a wonderful book — the Bible. We know it contains the words of eternal life, but somehow we get so busy with the books of this life that the Bible kind of gets squeezed out of our reading. We thank You that by studying the Word we can find the scriptural stars to guide us ■i along life’s way. But most of all, Father, we thank You for the life of Your Son, Jesus, that we find re corded in the Bible. What a wonder ful revelation of Thyself to man. When we turn our eyes to Him it makes us hang our heads in shame for our oft neglect of Him after all He has done for us. He made all know that they were His friends — the poorest and the dirtiest, the beggars and the lepers — these knew that they were His friends. He walked with them and sat at their table. He played with their children and healed their sick. All that He had— even His very life —was theirs—and ours. Thank You for Jesus. We want to know Him better so that when Your new world is ready, we’ll be ready for it by His help. We were just going to say thanks in this letter, but there is something we’d like to ask. There are so many of our friends down here who don’t know Jesus Christ yet. They’re migh ty fine people and we’d like them to come along with us to the new world, so we’d like to ask that Your Holy Spirit will give us the words to speak to them that will bring them to our Saviour. And not just give us words, but make our lives beautiful by His indwelling presence that the glory of Jesus may shine from us. And, if like sheep we lose our way, please send the Good Shepherd to search. He always knows where to find us. Thanks again—and all our love, Your Children
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ear Father: Another year has almost rolled by since our last Thanksgiving letter. A great many things have happened in that time. As You know, we’ve kept pretty busy and there have been quite a number of changes down here. There are new people with us who weren’t here when we wrote last year. Some of last year’s friends are still here, but a good many have moved to other parts of the world and some have journeyed to the Gold en City to live with You. On Thanksgiving Day most of us will be thinking about You. It’s really a nice celebration, even though we seem to have lost the real spirit of the thing. We have a tendency to want to feed our bodies rather than our souls. I have been doing some thinking about the Pilgrims who started Thanksgiving. They had quite a bit to be grateful for. But sometimes it seems that we in America in the 20th century have more to be thankful for than they did. Maybe we just don’t see our need for thanksgiving as clearly as they did. We buy most of our things in stores, but they watched the grain sprouting from the fields they had cleared—felt the warmth of the sun and the moisture of the rain. They cut the trees, that You had grown, to make their houses. And they saw the turkeys that You made winging through the trees—and the deer gliding through the forest. To them it was pretty plain that except for Your bounty they never would have made it. With us it’s a little different. We tend to give ourselves the credit for what we have in life. If we stopped to think seriously about it we would realize that the cellophane bags, the tin cans and the bright cardboard boxes wouldn’t do us much good if
You didn’t keep sending us the sun shine and the rain. If the seeds didn’t sprout and the cattle didn’t grow and the earth yield up her minerals— or if the sun moved too close or too far away, or the clouds withheld their rain—or any of a million things, over which we have no control, should happen—we’d soon disappear. So please accept our thanks for these things. There are so many things we are thankful for. We’re thankful that You made us so we can laugh even when the world around us looks pret ty grim. Laughter is a wonderful thing. We don’t often think of it coming from You, I guess, but of all the creatures You have made on the face of the earth we alone have received this gift—the gift of silver laughter that can reflect sunshine through the dark clouds of despair —laughter that can push past the ceiling of depression and let the twinkling stars shine through i— laughter that puts elastic in nerves stretched tight—laughter that is the safety valve when the pressure builds to the breaking point. So thank You for laughter and help us to use it right. Show us how to make it the laughter of love. And speaking of laughter reminds us of our own children and we can never be too thankful for them. I guess You knew we needed children around to keep us from growing stale. Their spirit of adventure is con tagious and helps keep such a spirit alive in us. And in them we have a chance to correct the mistakes that we have made in our own lives. We
By Frank H. E. Wood Pastor, Union Church of Bogota Colombia
THE KING'S BUSINESS
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