In his book, Run with the Horses, Pastor Eugene Peterson gives us a vivid illustration of prayer as commonly practiced.  It’s like going to a restaurant with somebody where we’ll order food and drink from the waiter.  At the end we might say thanks for a good meal or good service; and we might even leave gratuity.  However, once we leave the restaurant, we will usually forget about the waiter.  God is that waiter. For many of us, prayer is just a time when we place our so-called orders and make complaints about the quality of food or service rendered to us.  We’ll not think about God till we pray again.

Eugene Peterson says that God is to be the person sitting across the table from us, the person we are dining with, someone who is dear to us and we cherish spending time with.  God is to be that person whom we will keep in touch and plan on meeting again soon.  He is the person we say thank you, not casually but sincerely, for being a good friend, for helping us in times of need, and for reminding us of our wrong.  It is when we talk with God, “the world is not banished, but it is in the shadows, on the periphery.”  Like when we are dining with someone special, everybody else in the restaurant becomes a shadow.  That’s how prayer—and life with God—should be. 

So many things come to mind whenever we think of Thanksgiving: our family, our work, our friends, our health, our church, etc.  But there is one more thing that we should never neglect to remember:  God’s grace.  The older I am, the more aware I am of the grace of God.  In his book, Knowing Christ Today, Dallas Willard defines grace broadly as “God acting in our lives to accomplish what we cannot do on our own.”  Oh, how true! I am awed whenever I think of what He has done in my life: calling me, changing me, and trusting me to do something for Him. All are things I cannot do on my own; all happen because of God’s acting in my life: Grace.  To Him I owe everything.

Pastor Paul