Thanksgiving is coming, or is it?

Thanksgiving is not just eating a dinner, as nice as that is, but when other things come before the real meaning of things, then it is bad.

It’s not about how much nor how little one has or not. There were some kids who said thank you for the candy they got from us (on Halloween).

Maybe there is some hope, I hope so. I have not heard kids say thank you for about 15 to 20 years. It is long overdue. When we put God first we learn also to give back.

I think God gets tired when we don’t give thanks. It’s like the story of the man who hurt his foot and asked his girlfriend to rub this foot that was hurting so bad. He did not ask for anything wrong. What would Jesus do? And yet he gives his girlfriend tons of back rubs and foot rubs. Then why not care?

I well recall a Thanksgiving when my mother, Ethel Bain was alive and I would like to see this happen in every church in Manteca. But we have become to be full of our own selves.

I don’t believe the LDS Church in Manteca will ever do this again, but I will never forget this one year. The pastor of the church had every one come on Thanksgiving Day for a two-hour service to thank God for his blessing. I will never forget that one service, as family after family came and one by one said thanks to God and to each other.

That day for two hours God was put first, the TV was turned off, the dinner was put away till later. The blessing of God that came that coming year, I will never forget.

Every church in Manteca should do this. I told my mother, not because these people were LDS, I said we have to go to be able to give God thanks on Thanksgiving Day!

If you want your family and all that you have to be blessed it is time all of us do this.

Would it not be nice to see people put the real meaning of things back in place even on Christmas, and not make it a time of getting all that you

can. Do you not believe it is time we get God’s blessing?

The only way that will happen is for all of us to put God first. I hope that the LDS Church and every church in Manteca would open their church and let us come as people of God to give thanks!

There was, a few weeks ago, a woman who got into a fight over food at St. Paul’s Society here in Manteca. Don’t you think that makes God a little upset?

We need a day of Thanksgiving and a day we make God first, even before food.
Thank you.

Darryl Bain
Manteca
Nov. 3, 2009