Author: Jennifred Jones

Today’s Thanksgiving

Jennifred Jones

Today is Thanksgiving Day. Actually every day is thanksgiving day, but today is the day America set aside to Praise God for bringing them through to a new land and giving them new friends and many new things to learn about…truly a land of new opportunities. So the Pilgrims and the Indians learned to work together and were able to help each other survive and learn new skills and they were so thankful they had a big celebration feast and they all ran off to Meijer to buy a big turkey and sweet potato casserole, green beans and some pecan pie! Not!

They were so thankful that they shared with each other out of what they had on hand from their own lands and root cellars, the men having gone out with bow and arrow or musket and catching deer, wild turkey or pheasant (we don’t really know what all they did or did not eat), but they made do with what they had, shared liberally, and were just glad to be together giving thanks with and for each other.

Why are you writing about this, you might say? Today, this Thanksgiving, was a bit different for me than in the past. My family is all grown and are scattered all over the land and sea and some had other families they were ‘thanking’ with, so I decided to head to town. I went to our brand new Fresh Thyme Market and had some salted caramel coffee and some yogurt covered Christmas pretzels and looked over all the wonderful food and thoroughly enjoyed myself! I ended up buying a couple ground sausages for dinner tomorrow to have for my brother and his wife and that was it!

I had talked with most of the kids early in the morning and I went home to cook my supper, my own thanksgiving dinner.

Guess what I cooked? A skillet full of ‘pottage’, chopped kale, chopped onion, frozen corn and peas and seasoned it with garlic, sea salt and cracked pepper and topped it all off with feta cheese. I made some orange, banana, walnut muffins earlier and that was my dessert. Rather unconventional, but I was happy! The thought came to me, I have so much to be thankful for, God has met all my needs, I didn’t need to have to have turkey, and cranberry and pie to make my day. It was OK to eat from what I had on hand. After all, it was just me, and that was fine with me. I’m not opposed to tradition, but this is how it worked today for me.

I thought, ‘how nice it is to be content even though you may not be doing things the way others are doing things’. They do what works for them; I do what works for me. It takes all the pressure off… knowing it is okay to be thankful with what I have all by myself and be happy for everyone else being thankful wherever they may be.

Contagiously Good!

Jennifred Jones

Are you contagious? Would people be able to catch what you’ve got? Do you have anything worth catching? Is what you’ve got worth spreading?

Or have the antibodies of sameness, uninteresting, usual, boring, predictable, been working on you so long that they have killed off all your desire to be different? To be different in a good way! To be so radically good that it catches others off guard!

That’s how God wants us to be…going about wherever we go doing good, in whatever way or means the situation calls for. Be it unplanned, unexpected, unusual, or different, God will use you, if you’re open, to do good to somebody in your life each and every day. And it will be one of the most exciting things to happen to you! To be used by Almighty God to make a difference, a lasting difference, for good in the life of someone else.

Your smile at the right time can bring a ray of joy to a person you don’t even know, who is going through a very difficult time. Your ‘Hi, how are you doing today?’ said to a complete stranger can cause them to come out of their shell and begin to experience life in a new way. Your stopping to pick up something that the person in front of you dropped and didn’t see it, restores faith in people and God and His goodness once again.

Like the Starbucks stories we’ve heard about where one person pays it forward and starts a chain reaction to many people in line behind him, that one random act of kindness snowballs into an avalanche that causes good to many, many people.  So your good deeds, your good words, your helpfulness causes a reaction for good even if only in the other person’s heart, who then takes it home and is nice to his family, or the driver ahead of him.

One good deed is very contagious!

Let that good deed be yours:)

Hurry! Hurry!! Hurry!!! Is God in a Hurry?

Jennifred Jones

Jesus was never in hurry.  God is not in a hurry. Why are we?

I’m not talking about being lazy, overly laid back, procrastinating, and indecisive.  I’m talking about the nagging feeling that we have got to hurry up with this, and hurry up with that. We’ve got to rush to get this done so we can rush to get the next thing done.

We nag our kids and ourselves to push, push, push to accomplish more and faster and quicker until we’re running around in a fit of nervous energy most of the time and can’t concentrate long enough on any one thing to do it well, or see if there might be a better way to do it, or, horror of horrors, if it even needs to be done at all!!!

Is this you? It has been me! …too many times!!!

A little voice inside my head tells me to hurry when I’m washing the dishes, to hurry when I’m trying to organize something,  to hurry when I’m trying to learn something new, to hurry even when I’m doing something relaxing! What is going on?

God made the world and everything in it. He made it so it takes time for a tree to grow; it takes time for a baby to develop…9 long months before it is ready to face the outside world; it takes 20 years to grow up and then some more to mature, and just to gain some wisdom and understanding, you’re not going to gain it by a one evening sitting– reading Wikipedia or a self-help book.

Yes, everything takes time. It takes time to think! Allow it to happen and don’t feel guilty. It takes time to think things through to get the right perspective and understand what you want to do, be, have, help, become, encourage, start, finish. Don’t give in to the ‘hurry’ bug. Don’t give in to its bite!

It takes time to read a story to your kids. Enjoy it and make it interesting and fun for them. It takes time to remember and tell a family story from your childhood to pass on that memory to the next and the next generation. Do it. And do it well. You’re building. You’re building something lasting.

The hardest, sturdiest trees grow the slowest. The white oak and the black walnut, both prized for their quality dense wood, so excellent for woodworking,  grow at a slow pace, taking many years…no shortcuts. Some rings are narrower than others showing a dry summer that year, but the tree kept at it steadily and soon another better year came along and the tree grew more.

The trees that grow the quickest, the softwoods, don’t have a lot of stability and cannot be used on big projects; they can’t support the stress needed to accomplish the job. They have bigger pores in their grain and are not as smooth, and a big wind will blow them right over.

Let growth happen, a little here, a little there. Don’t be in a big rush about it. Let God do His slow but steady, time-consuming yet sure work in you and in your family.

It will get done, it just takes time!