Thankmas, A Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

Feel free to stop by for a visit at 
VMRC's Hawthorne Circle!

In this Thanksgiving and Advent season, and at this senior season of our lives, we're spending lots of time in the gratitude department.

Here are just a few of the things for which I am especially grateful:

• Alma Jean. My one and only has been a gift that truly keeps on giving. August 8 of this year marked the 60th anniversary of our blessed journey together.

• Our loving family. We are blessed with three beloved adult children and six wonderful grandchildren, all doing well!

• Our VMRC and house church families. We're surrounded by kind neighbors here in Park Village, on the campus of the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community, and by supportive members of Family of Hope, a living room size congregation we've been a part of for over 35 years. 

• Our reasonably good health. In spite of the occasional aches, pains and memory lapses that accompany our stage of life, we are still upright, mobile and able to take care of each other.

• Our newly repaired 2012 Corolla. After a recent brush with the safety stripe end of a guardrail on Smithland Road, our faithful vehicle is good as new and should provide all the transportation we need for the rest of our days. No one was charged with a violation, no one was hurt and we and our 

Toyato are still in a "Let's go places" mode.

• My new part-time work. After concluding 35 years as a counselor at Family Life Resource Center in March, in July I began helping out as a part of the Hometown Pastoral Counseling Group in nearby Dayton for one day a week. I love my clients and love the balance of being engaged in work I love and yet being free to pursue other things, like serving as chair of the local Valley Justice Coalition and being in correspondence with people behind bars.

• Our little backyard garden. Growing and harvesting fresh food is truly therapeutic for me. We've put our small plot to bed for now, resting under a warm blanket of leaves, but I'm already looking forward to next spring!

• Above all, gratitude for the Gift of Immanuel--God With Us. Join us in celebration of great joy even in a time of much darkness and devastation elsewhere in the world. 

Truly he taught us to love one another,

His law is love and his gospel is peace.

Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother

And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name!

Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices,

O night divine, O night, O night divine!

Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Jq7JEULWIA