The traditional Thanksgiving food is turkey, usually accompanied by stuffing (or dressin’, as we in the south call it, with sides varying somewhat by region and tradition. I never liked cranberry sauce all that much, but I always looked forward to Grandmama’s cranberry salad. And no thanksgiving feast can be complete without a slice of pecan pie.

But what if the traditional fair is unavailable, or you just feel like something different? My wife and I ended up going traditional this year, but often choose barbecue instead. When I was at school in 1994 and unable to go home, my friend and I went to a cafeteria. I can’t imagine they did not have turkey on Thanksgiving day, but I opted for liver and onions.

What is the most unusual thing you have had for Thanksgiving dinner? I will be coll ecting comments from the blog, Facebook, and X. AT least one respondent will get a free copy of my book. I will accept entries until December 15, 2024.

I only ask one think, assuming you know your Bible well enough to do this. Read the major party platforms. See which of them most closely aligns with God’s word, then choose your candidates accordingly. Neither will be perfect, but one will be far superior to the other.

I entitled this post “Vote for Jesus.” You might well reply that if He were on the ballot, you would happily do so. But He isn’t. He never will be. One day “every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” No one will have a vote on that day. But that day has not come, and until then we have a responsibility as citizens of a country that allows us a say in our government to cast our vote for the people who will most closely adhere to His will.

Granted, there are many issues on which honest people may disagree about what that is, but there are some things on which there should be little doubt. Human life is sacred from the moment of conception. No one has the right to take innocent human life. I recently saw an internet meme that made a very good statement. If you fight for women’s rights, start with allowing them to be born! Speaking of women, how can we protect their rights if we can’t even define who they are? God created male and female. He made them different from each other, each designed with unique qualities best suited for working together to raise a family and preserve a society.

I could go on, but the arguments become more complicated as we delve into more complex issues. It’s far to late in the game for me to tackle those, and you’re probably not going to read it even if I stay up half the night writing it. My plea is that you who believe will prayerfully consider your choices, go to the polls tomorrow, and vote for Jesus. He’s not on your ballot, but He is in your heart, and His Holy Spirit will guide you into the truth if you will let him.

Unfortunately, he took me a little too literally. I also said that if anything else needed to be done to please let me know and then do it. I will pay any additional cost. That he hasn’t gotten. Do I need a new service? Maybe, but I like the price and I haven’t gotten any letters.

As a consequence, I often run into branches sticking out too far or some shrub or unwanted plant out of control. If I ask him, he’ll fix it, but I have to remember to ask, and so what usually happens is nothing but me running into branches and complaining.

There’s a simple solution here if I don’t want to fire him, and I finally did it. I bought a pair of pruning shears. My vision is not that great, but I can certainly find the base of a small branch and cut it off. I just need to be careful that my fingers stay well away from the blades.

I found this to be surprisingly satisfying. Instead of complaining that the simple job was not done, I took two minutes and did it. This morning when I returned from a morning walk, I discovered two or three more that needed cutting and did that too. Why had I put up with this frustration for so many years? I fell into the trap of “I need.” I need someone else to do that. I’m not sure how that happened. I don’t normally think that way. I guess the thought process was that the yard guy does yard stuff, so I need him to do this. Maybe he should, but it wasn’t necessary.

Sometimes all we need to solve our problems is just a little initiative. Less than $20 and two minutes and my problem is gone. Sometimes we need help, but sometimes we need to just do it.

Thieves are one of them. Not just any thieves, but in particular those who go after charities. I help manage one, and had I saved them I could show you hundreds of phishing emails aimed at fooling someone into transferring money or giving up sensitive information. They usually impersonate another officer in the organization.

What kind of lowlife targets charities? I confess to a very strong temptation to reply to one of these, like the one I got today, and tell them exactly what I think. I imagine describing non kinds of hellish torment that they will surely be due when their miserable earthly existence is terminated.

But I always stop short. For one thing, these are often automated scams, run by the online equivalent of the common street thug using tools they got off the “dark web”. My tirade might feel good for a moment, but would accomplish nothing, and possibly worse than nothing. I would be confirming that the address is valid and possibly inviting a more focused attack on the organization.

Then there’s that quiet voice inside of me, reminding me that I’m supposed to love even these people. Jesus’ blood will cover them too, if they repent. I should be praying for them, brokenhearted at their likely end, not rejoicing in it. Ok, Lord. Obviously, I still need some work.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45 LSB)

What I hear when someone tells me they didn’t have time is that whatever they didn’t have time for wasn’t important enough to them to allocate time to. Their reasons may be good ones. If my wife is in trouble, everything else just got pushed down the list and I’ll get to them if I can. We all have priorities, and we should.

It has been said that a person’s priorities can be determined by where they spend their money. There’s truth in that, but I think it’s at least as telling to see where they spend their time. Most of us will devote a sizeable chunk of time to work. For some, the job is a priority in itself, but I dare say for the majority of us, the real priority is food. We want to be able to eat, and so we work. We also want to be able to feed those whom we love and who depend on us. We might rather be doing something else, but priority drives us to do what we must do to satisfy it.

Others have discovered that at least in this country one does not necessarily have to work in order to eat, so long as he can accept the reduced standard of living that will likely result. For them, more immediate gratifications rule the day. They fail to see the destructive nature of the priorities they have chosen.

Often, we don’t have time because we waste it on things that don’t matter. Rest and entertainment are good things. To some degree, they are necessary for our health. But as with most things, too much of something good becomes bad for us. When our gratification becomes more important to us than the things that God has said are important, we need a priority adjustment.

I think it’s safe to say none of us get this completely right, but God’s word in the Bible does give us a framework for setting our priorities. Those who have been raised in church may be familiar with the hierarchy. The wonderful thing is that if you will maintain God at the top, service to Him will cascade down to the other things, because they all come from Him. Therefore, one activity is not exclusive to one priority. By working at a job, I am providing for my family and even for my church. So, I am also working in the service of God. That can get twisted. If my objective becomes the accumulation of wealth only that I may have more, then I can no longer claim that I do it in service to God. I’ve put something else at the top, and the whole structure will collapse.

I had in mind to list things out the way I think they should be based on my reading of scripture, but I think it will be better if I let the scripture speak for itself. Here are some key passages. All quotations are taking from the Legacy Standard Bible translation.

• ³⁵ And one of them, a scholar of the Law, asked Him a question, testing Him, ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷ And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the great and foremost commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:35-39)
• But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Timothy 5:8)
• ² fulfill my joy, that you think the same way, by maintaining the same love, being united in spirit, thinking on one purpose, ³ doing nothing from selfish ambition or vain glory, but with humility of mind regarding one another as more important than yourselves, ⁴ not merely looking out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. ⁵ Have this way of thinking in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men. ⁸ Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹ Therefore, God also highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:2-11)
• For even when we were with you, we used to command this to you: if anyone is not willing to work, neither let him eat. (2 Thessalonians 3:10)
• The beginning of wisdom is: Acquire wisdom; And with all your acquiring, acquire understanding. (Proverbs 4:7)

Adam and Eve are walking in the garden, but they’re not talking. They’re looking at their phones. Now in their defense, they don’t have any pockets to put them in, so what else are they going to do? The social circle is kind of small at this point, being only themselves, God, and Satan. In this reality, Satan was too lazy to bother possessing a snake, so he invented Facebook. That way, he could do his temptation from the warm comfort of his home. You’d think online porn would have been first, but in a world where everyone was already naked, it didn’t have the same appeal.

As Eve is strolling along, her phone tells Facebook that she’s near the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The algorithm makes sure that she reads the post from God that says, “From any tree of the garden you may surely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17) That would be a good thing, except that under the post there’s a button that says, “Missing Context.” Already thoroughly habituated to accepting anything she reads online, she taps the button and finds this, “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (genesis 3:4-5) And so it begins.

I enjoy social media. When I was first invited to join Facebook, I was delighted to find many of the people I had known throughout the years already there. It was fun to reconnect at some level and see what people would share. I was far more active myself at first. But eventually the newness wore off. I still use it to share things I find interesting and follow people I’m interested in or care about, but it is not a substitute for in-person interaction.

I think this is a problem, especially for the younger generations and especially when they start young. Their ability to form genuine relationships is short-circuited by the insertion of that little screen. It has led to an uptake in abusive and antisocial behavior because one suffers no significant consequence for one’s actions. Relationships are ephemeral, made and broken on the whim of the moment. Our perception of reality is altered because we can’t see through those little screens into the eyes behind them. We need human touch, sometimes even with a little force behind it.

I don’t blame social media for all of society’s ills or even for this one, but I think it is a contributing factor and applaud the efforts being made to shield children from using it too soon. They must learn how to function in the physical world first. Adults are not immune.

I find it interesting that the happiest among us are also likely to be the least addicted to their phones. I think it also has something to do with the fact that as one grows older, one usually comes to a greater understanding of life, what is important and what is not. Happiness has much more to do with what is going on inside us than what is going on around us. And I have to say that the older generations of Americans are more likely to be grounded in Christian principles, whether or not they accept the author of those principles. When we do things God’s way, life works better, and we are more likely to be happy with it.

⁸ But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, ⁹ that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; ¹⁰ for with the heart a person believes, leading to righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, leading to salvation. ¹¹ For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes upon Him will not be put to shame.” ¹² For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him, ¹³ for “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Romans 10:8-13 LSB

Note that salvation here is composed of two elements, confession and belief. To confess in this context is simply to affirm what is true, though since we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23), confession in the modern sense it also appropriate. Before we can be saved, we must come to the realization that we need saving. Hence, we have the phrase in the traditional “sinner’s prayer,” “I know that I am a sinner.”

So, it is important to understand what it is that we are believing and therefore confessing. After “believe” comes “in your heart.” This is more than an Intellectual assent. It is more than simply knowing the truth. James tells us that even the demons know that and shake with fear. It is a certainty from deep within you that demands a response.

You are believing that God raised Jesus from the dead. There’s a lot wrapped up in that short phrase. First, it presupposes an acknowledgment that God exists. If He doesn’t this is all nonsense. It also assigns a significance to the fact of Jesus’ rising. Even the Old Testament contains instances where God raised someone from the dead. This one is different because of who Jesus is and why He died. His was the perfect sacrifice that cleanses us from our sins, only possible because He Himself was the Son of God. That leads us to the confession part, which further expounds what we are believing, Jesus as Lord. Paul, the writer of the letter to the Romans from which I am quoting, left no doubt in the minds of his readers about what he was saying. Jesus is not simply a lord, but The Lord!

So, if we say and believe that Jesus is our Lord, it follows that we will act accordingly. Works can never save us but works will result from true salvation. We will not immediately stop sinning, but we will stop pursuing a sinful lifestyle. We will stumble and fall, but we must reach up for the hand of our Heavenly father. He will faithfully pick us up, tend our wounds, and help us to keep walking with Him.

Far be it from me to say that we should not be urging people to pray to receive Jesus as lord. We should be doing that as often as we can. But that is not the same thing as telling them that if they will just say this prayer, they’ve got their ticket to Heaven. We need to be sharing the whole of the Gospel message, so that they may come to a place of true repentance and belief.