Thankgiving Revisited

Thanksgiving...
In the Arizona desert there isn't much of anything but dry sand and tumble weeds and and the house built by Uncle Abram for Aunt Henrietta when they first were married.
Painted the strangest color of pink and it has a slight lean to it where the foundation has settled unevenly. Out back are miles of desert sand that stetch far to the mountains. Would you believe that the sweetest and cleanest water in all the world is pumped right out of the ground there?
Aunt Henrietta grows the most beautiful roses along with beans and squash and tall stalks of sweet corn in a well tilled stretch of land that she has fenced off. The corn alone seems to reach as high as the sky as though reaching up to heaven to thank God for the sun and that little bit of rain. Carrying heavy buckets of water from the well in the heat of the day, she has named each one of those growing, green things like they are her special little children, you know. She has even been known to talk to them, too. She tells them that it is their duty to grow tall and sweet.

Most of the food eaten came off the land way before times got hard like they are today. "Take care of God's green earth and God will take care of you.", she says. It has to be back breaking work to coax food out that hard Arizona clay but that need to grow things has become a part of the family history and tradition. Nobody has ever gone hungry as long as she has something to do with it. Aunt Henrietta lives by giving thanks to God for everything, even the things that most folks seem to take for granted. No matter what anybody asks her for she always says, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." As a kid it would make you mad with impatience and desire for immediate satisfaction but this is one of those golden rules that stays with you throughout life. Aunt Henrietta has a whole lot of faith that the seeds she plants in that dry Arizona desert will grow into tall stalks of sweet corn or beans or squash that will feed her family. Wouldn't it be wonderful if every human being could plant a seed and grow something in the earth? It would be a way of saying thank you to God for feeding us and clothing us and taking care of all of our needs. Maybe the other lesson we could all learn is that it is possible for us to become a nation of givers and not just takers. Don't you think that we would all be healthier and happier? Like Aunt Henrietta says, "Take care of God's green earth and God will take care of you." Life can deal you some hard Arizona clay kind of problems. But Aunt Henrietta kind of faith will till that soil and get rid of the rocks. Aunt Henrietta faith will give you the strength to do the work and carry those heavy buckets of water to that problem in the heat of the day. It will give you the voice to talk to that problem and tell it that you are a child of the Most High God and He is bigger than it. And when all is said and done, stand back, give thanks and watch His glory and His grace go into action. This is a Aunt Henrietta story and this is what this story taught me.
Debi Mason, 2006
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