This year was the first year I did not have a Thanksgiving. I was very sad because I love Thanksgiving. Mostly because of the food, but all that family togetherness stuff is nice too. I mean, no apple pie? No stuffing? What kind of sad Thanksgiving was this going to be?
We had just arrived in India and spent Thanksgiving Day driving from Delhi north to Dehra Dun. Its about a 150 mile drive, but due to it being, well, India, it took 9 hours. We were driving on the main ‘highway’ which was not very direct, going through many villages and towns. Plus it usually had only 2 lanes, was occasionally unpaved, had only one rest stop, was full of potholes and speed bumps and was used not only by cars and trucks, but also bicycles, motorbikes, horses, water buffalo and donkey carts, tractors, pedestrians and even people in wheelchairs. Just rolling down the highway. I was not looking forward to this ride after our 20 hours of plane travel, but here we went.
I saw a lot along the way. I saw women washing clothes in rivers, banging clothes on rocks to clean them. Women bathing their children in a river or in a bucket next to the water pump. Women collecting water for their family at the local pump and carrying it back to their homes on their heads. Women cooking meals over open fires. Women emptying chamber pots in the open sewer that runs along the road. Women hanging up wet clothing to dry on the tents which they lived in. Women harvesting sugar cane with babies strapped to their backs. Women making cow dung bricks by hand, as their toddler sits next to her watching. Women sweeping the stoops of their tiny one-room homes with no plumbing.
What a sight to see on Thanksgiving day. What a reality check. How dare I be discontent over not being able to buy all the clothes I want or my house not looking like the Pottery Barn catalog? I would watch my healthy, well-fed, (somewhat) clean kids playing next to me with their little princess toys, then look out the window to see thin little girls dressed in rags working in the fields or carrying water or looking after other little ones instead of being in school.
All I could think about was Luke 12:48: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” We’re certainly not wealthy, which I am well aware of living in our neighborhood. I navigate around the Hummers and Lexus SUVs when I’m picking the girls up from school, show up for playdates at houses that make my jaw drop. And I confess to looking around and wondering why I don’t have those things.
What a reality check. My family has food and shelter and clothing. Am I truly thankful for that? Do I even acknowledge that provision to God or do I just take it for granted? Do I thank Him that my children aren’t going hungry? Or that we are sheltered from the bitter cold this winter? I focus so much on what I don’t have that I am not thankful for what I do.
All of us have been given so much. What are we doing with it? What am I doing with my time? My money? My education? My talents? Am I taking advantage of God’s blessings in my life, awaiting those wonderful words from Matthew 25:23, the parable of the talents “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.” Or am I just wasting my life in discontent, missing out on enjoying the gifts God has given me?
Despite not celebrating Thanksgiving this year, somehow I think this Thanksgiving will be one that I remember forever.
“Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.” Psalm 118:1
