Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.

                                                                          Henry Ward Beecher

     This Sunday will be a first for me. It will be the first time while I have been your pastor that we will dedicate our pledges on Thanksgiving Sunday. For a variety of seemingly good reasons we have always tried to have this moment of blessing long before Thanksgiving Sunday. We delayed the dedication this year because we wanted members and friends to ask questions and consider raising their pledges by six percent. There have not been too many questions regarding the changes in this year's process. I hope that this is a good indication that our campaign will be a success. All that said, now that Thanksgiving/Pledge Dedication Sunday is upon us I'm baffled. Why have we waited so long to do this. What better Sunday than Thanksgiving Sunday to express our gratitude for the faith and faithfulness of our members and friends.  

     From now until Thanksgiving Day we will all be reflecting upon those things for which we are thankful. It is obvious, but for some reason of all the things I am accustomed to mentioning when expressing gratitude, it has never occurred to me  to give thanks for faith. That is, until I read a prayer of invocation written by Maren C. Tirabassi and Joan Jordan Grant. 

Gracious God,
we come this morning to seek our own faith - 
     the faith that makes us whole;
we come to express our common faith - 
     the faith that brings us joy;
we come to give thanks for faith - 
     the faith that is a gift from you;
we come to share the faith of others and 
     offer with love our faith to them.
Receive us into worship with your welcome of grace.
Amen. 

 Last Sunday we celebrated those among us who have lived into their eighties and nineties and those who have been members of this church for over fifty years. During the celebration the word that keep coming to me was faithfulness. Faith is expressed many ways in our lives. The choices we make when things are good and life is grand, the choices we make when things are rough and not going the way we want and the choice to stay committed to our faith and the church community where our faith is lived out.

     Just as our commitment to regularly attend worship, practice spiritual disciplines and be part of a church family are expressions of our faith, so is our pledge. I was overcome with the faithfulness of those we honored and celebrated last Sunday during worship and this coming Sunday I expect to be moved to gratitude and praise for those who financially support our church's operating budget and ministry. 

     So I invite you this Sunday to join us for worship and give thanks for your faith. "God has listened to our prayers; when we pass through the torrents of deep troubles, God turns our sea into dry land; when we are entangled in the web-nets of life, God does not let our feet slip; when we are tested as silver is tried, God keeps us in the land of the living; when we go through fire and water, God brings us to a spacious place." Come and worship and and give thanks for God's faithfulness to us.   

       
                                                                                            Rev. David