What Giving Thanks Can Bring

During the Depression, William Stidger was in a restaurant with friends who were all talking about how terrible things were: suffering people, rich people committing suicide, joblessness. The conversation got more miserable as it went on.

A minister in the group interrupted. “In two or three weeks I have to preach a sermon on Thanksgiving Day,” he said. “What can I say that’s affirmative in a period of world depression like this?”

Stidger felt the Spirit of God saying to him, “Why don’t you give thanks to those people who have been a blessing in your life and affirm them during this terrible time?”

He began to think about that. He remembered a schoolteacher who was very dear to him, a wonderful teacher of poetry and English literature who had gone out of her way to put a great love of literature and verse in him, which has affected all his writings and his preaching. So he sat down and wrote a letter to this woman, now up in years. It was only a matter of days until he got a reply in the feeble scrawl of the aged:

My dear Willy,
I can’t tell you how much your note meant to me. I am in my 80s, living alone in a small room, cooking my own meals, lonely, and like the last leaf of autumn lingering behind. You’ll be interested to know that I taught in school for more than fifty years, and yours is the first note of appreciation I ever received. It came on a blue, cold morning, and it cheered me as nothing has done in many years.

“I’m not sentimental, but I found myself weeping over that note,” Stidger said. Then he thought of a kind bishop, now retired, who had recently faced the death of his wife and was all alone. This bishop had taken a lot of time giving Stidger advice and counsel and love when he first began his ministry. So he sat down and wrote the old bishop. In two days a reply came back.

My dear Will,
Your letter was so beautiful, so real, that as I sat reading it in my study, tears of gratitude fell from my eyes. Before I realized what I was doing, I rose from my chair and I called my wife’s name to share it with her, forgetting she was gone. You’ll never know how much your letter has warmed my spirit. I have been walking around in the glow of your letter all day long.

 — David A. Seamands, “Instruction for Thanksgiving,” Preaching Today Audio, no. 62

Thankful Even In The Storm

A woman was always able to find something for which she was thankful.  One morning there was a terrible snow storm, but she still showed up in time for work, and she was thankful.  Her supervisor was surprised to see her, and was equally surprised to hear that she was thankful to make it to work in such a storm.

When asked why she was so thankful, she said that she was thankful that she lived so close to work.  Her supervisor still did not understand how she could even walk on the icy sidewalks with the blowing winds.  She said that she was so thankful that she was able to crawl to work on her hands and knees.  Her supervisor was astounded, and asked what was so wonderful about crawling to work on her hands and knees.  The woman smiled and said, "During the blizzard in the early morning light, no one was able to see me!"

- Submitted by Dr. James Wideman, The Pastor's Story File (November 1994)

Incapable Of Being Grateful

A South African man surprised nine men who were robbing his home. Eight of the robbers got away, but the homeowner managed to shove one into his backyard pool.

After realizing the robber couldn’t swim, the homeowner jumped in to save him. Once out of the pool, the thief yelled to his friends to come back. Then he pulled a knife and threatened the man who had just rescued him.

The homeowner threw the thief back in the water.

 — Kashiefa Ajam, “Homeowner Threatened by the Robber He Saved,” Cape Times, 
Cape Town, South Africa (March 23, 2004)

Keeping Each Other Afloat

In Guideposts magazine Donald Vairin of Oceanside, California, told of serving as a young hospital corpsman in the invasion of Guam during World War II.  Suddenly his boat came to a grinding halt.  They had hit a coral reef, and the commanding officer ordered everyone off the ship.

Donald jumped into the ocean and sank like a rock, his carbine rifle, medical pack, canteen, and boots dragging him down.  He forced himself to the surface, gasping for air, only to sink again.  He tried to pull off his boots, but the effort exhausted him, and he suddenly realized he wasn't going to make it.

Just then he saw a man thrashing in the water next to him, and in desperation he clutched onto him.  That proved enough to hold him up and get him to the reef where he was picked up by a rescue boat.  But Donald felt so guilty about grabbing the drowning man to save himself that he never told anyone what had happened.

About six months later, on shore leave in San Francisco, he stopped in a restaurant.  A sailor in uniform waved him over to sit with him, and as he did so he announced to his friends, "This is my buddy.  He saved my life."

"What are you talking about?" asked Donald.

"Don't you remember," said the man.  "We were in the water together at Guam.  You grabbed on to me.  I was going down, and you held me up."

- Donald Vairin, "His Mysterious Ways," Guideposts (September 1999)