Today as we celebrate Thanksgiving, I invite each of you listening to take a moment to make a mental list of all the ways that God has blessed you. Let me prime the pump, so to speak. You have life when other people born the same year you were born are already dead. You are up and around when other people are sick. Or maybe on your list is something as simple and profound as living in the United States of America. For many other people in the world, life is far more difficult, simply because of where they live. Or maybe you have money when other people are poor; or education when other people are uneducated; a job when others are unemployed; friends and family when others are alone. You have a place to live when there are others who are homeless. You have the Bible when other people either cannot read or don’t have access to a Bible. You know about Jesus Christ while others have never heard of him. And that’s just the beginning of the list. Each one of us could add hundreds of other items to our lists of all the ways that God has blessed us.

Jesus is delighted to let us have and use what is his. But he holds us accountable. He calls us to readiness and to responsibility with these words, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”