Shelburne faith column: Seeing Thanksgiving through old eyes
Many of us are familiar with the famous “Serenity Prayer” that says, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
A couple of decades ago my dear friend Pat McCollum sent me a take-off on it, a ditty called “The Senility Prayer.”
God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
The good fortune to run into the ones that I do,
And — the eyesight to tell the difference.
When I saw that the first time, I chuckled. I was still too young and healthy to have any idea how valid that prayer would be if I hung around twenty or thirty years.
The middle line speaks to me loudest of all. During the Thanksgiving season this year, when I tell God thank you, much of my gratitude will be for still having so many longtime friends that I keep running into.
While my lady and I were eating supper at the Plaza on night this fall, I got a cordial hug from Ann Preston. Ann was the daughter of my dear friend and amazing colleague, Dr. Winfred Moore. She taught English at Amarillo High while I was teaching the academic Bible course there. One year I shared her classroom. What a blessing it was to see her again!
Just a few days before that, when I was at city hall to lead the city council’s invocation, one of my former students identified himself to me. He told me that his father had also been in my class. Wow! A week later, one of my first students (out of my 1974 class) greeted me at a funeral and told me that our studies that year had led her into forty years as a pastor. I thanked her for telling me that.
I thank God that in our waning years my lady and I are still surrounded by so many sweet people who have blessed us in so many ways. This probably would not be true if I had been forced to live and raise my kids in a dozen places, as did many of my pastor friends. One blessing of getting to stay in one place is that we now are surrounded by a host of friends.
At the top of my list this Thanksgiving I will put those friends.
Gene Shelburne is pastor emeritus of the Anna Street Church of Christ, 2310 Anna Street, Amarillo, Texas. Contact him at GeneShel@aol.com, or get his books and magazines at www.christianappeal.com. His column has run on the Faith page for more than three decades.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Shelburne faith column: Seeing Thanksgiving through old eyes
