Being Thankful

For the past half-dozen or so years, my family has delivered Thanksgiving meals to those less fortunate through our church. It's a great time for us to spend together and a great teaching moment that we need to be grateful for what we have. However, this year my wife and kids each had another activity that day so I delivered meals by myself.

Normally, we'll deliver a meal and take a couple of minutes to discuss the family and then drift back to whatever we were discussing prior to the delivery. Don't get me wrong - I love spending this time with my family - but this year was a lot different for me.

I arrived at the church about 9:15 a.m. as the leaders of this effort were going to be having a driver's meeting prior to loading vehicles at about 9:30. Since I also know the woman who directs this effort, she greeted me and asked the volunteers at the table to go ahead and give me my maps since we had done this so many times in the past. The lady who was handing out the assignments and maps sheepishly asked if I would be willing to drive to Kokomo to deliver baskets. My first thought, which happened to come flying right out of my mouth was, "No, I can't drive to Kokomo. It's a good hour drive just to get there." She then asked if I would be willing to drive to either Atlanta or Cicero, both of which are about 30 miles from our church. Feeling guilty that I had turned down driving an hour one way to deliver food to someone who probably really needed it, I instantly said yes and asked if I could have six baskets in those areas.

I really didn't think much about delivering the baskets on my way to the first house so I turned on the radio and listened to some music. After my first delivery, I decided to turn off the radio and really think about what I was doing and how I was impacting someone's life by providing a nice Thanksgiving meal that they may not be able to have without my delivery. It didn't take me long to realize that it's actually sad that we only help these people on Thanksgiving. They certainly need our help all year long.

On the way to my last delivery, I was driving down a very nice street with well-kept houses and found myself wondering as I got close to the address why anyone in this area would need a Thanksgiving meal. When I was about a half-block away, I saw amongst these nice houses three small run-down brick buildings each housing two apartments. Upon delivering a meal to one of the apartments I realized that there are people living amongst us everywhere who needed our help from time to time.

I'm already looking forward to delivering Thanksgiving meals next year. I think I'll ask if I can go to Kokomo. In the meantime, I hope to find other opportunities to help others in need. I hope you do, too.