11043c

Of the fifty plus Thanksgiving days in my lifetime, I have only been away from home and my immediate family a handful of times. During my four years of playing college basketball, I missed Thanksgiving at home because my college team participated in a tournament each year, which required travel on Thanksgiving Day in order to begin play on Friday.

One year, the tournament was scheduled in the hometown of one of the players on our team. This player’s sister planned a Thanksgiving meal for our team upon our arrival on Thanksgiving Day. When our team arrived at the airport to leave, we discovered that our flight had been cancelled. There was not another flight until late Thanksgiving night. As a result, we missed the Thanksgiving dinner prepared for us. Instead, we spent Thanksgiving at a movie theater near the airport watching some inane movie in an attempt to kill time until our flight left late that night. Our Thanksgiving dinner consisted of stale popcorn and rubbery hot dogs.

As I sat in the movie theater chewing on my rubbery hot dog, I thought of the turkey, stuffing, cranberries, and pumpkin pie that I was missing. I remember thinking that not only did I miss out on the Thanksgiving dinner, but my ravenous family would probably consume all those wonderful Thanksgiving leftovers. I was missing the leftovers.

When I returned home late Sunday night, I found that my self-pity was unwarranted because my mom had saved an entire Thanksgiving dinner plate of food for my return. I should have known she would do this. My mom has always been the one in my family to organize schedules, events, and dinners so that my sisters and I each felt loved and cared for. My mom is the glue that kept my family close, even as my sisters and I became adults with our own careers, responsibilities, and families.

Although my family does not always see eye to eye on many issues, we always make efforts to be together in times of trouble and in times of celebration. Each member of my family has different strengths, gifts, and abilities to sustain and help one another in our own unique ways. Our identity includes the aspect that we are individual members of one another. Each of us has a different function in the support of our family unit. We support one another, we look out for one another, we love one another, and we save Thanksgiving leftovers for one another. Without my family realizing it, they are a model of what the church should be. We are told in Romans 12:4–5:

“For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.”

Jesus has called believers to be part of an even larger and more important family or union. Our identity in Christ means that we are individually members of one another as believers. We are a union of believers in Christ. Jesus is the glue that keeps this union together. Jesus is the head of this union. Jesus is Lord and as members of this union we are to obey Him. This should affect our daily lives. We cannot ignore our union with other believers and still call Jesus Lord.

We each have unique God-given strengths, gifts, and abilities in which we are called to serve God and serve one another. Jesus is always there for us and He orchestrates schedules, events, and even dinners so that believers can minister to other believers in times of trouble and in times of celebration. So don’t miss the leftovers. Rather, obey Jesus and heed His call to serve your family in Christ. Then you can rest assured that you will be blessed not with mere Thanksgiving leftovers, but with the peace and joy that comes from serving your Lord.