I had heard the rumors.
Word on the street was the next shortage we would endure as a result of the on-going pandemic was a lack of jellied cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving.
Now, I can say with a fairly clear conscience that I’m probably not guilty of idolatry when it comes to this particular food item, but it has been a traditional part of my family’s holiday festivities as far back as I can remember. And I am not alone. First produced in 1941, Ocean Spray currently sells 70 million cans of the stuff every year. That comes out to one can for every family in America.
At right around $1.50 per can, it’s the everyman’s holiday condiment. Is it a condiment? Is it even a sauce? Does it defy description? Did you know it takes 220 berries to make each can?
With all the time and effort put into our holiday banquets, why is this log-shaped, garnet-colored, jiggling gelatinous goo such an institution? It’s virtually an icon, but there it sits in the midst of all the carefully-prepared Thanksgiving feast items –unceremoniously dumped out of its can, unheated, uncooled, unprepared and retaining the shape of the very can it came out of.
Nobody ever modifies it, changes it, or glorifies it in any way. It’s not even worthy of a spritz of aerosol whipped cream or a sprig of parsley.
We eat two, maybe three spoonfuls of the stuff before it bleeds into the mashed potatoes or the stuffing and we are good for the remaining 364 days of the year. It’s tasty and things just wouldn’t be the same without it but absolutely no one has ever uttered the words, “Wow! The jellied cranberry sauce was especially good this year! Great job Uncle Bert!”
And we ask Uncle Bert to bring the cranberry goo every year because we know he hasn’t got a lot of money and the last time we asked him to bring something that required actual cooking skills to prepare, he brought a pumpkin pie from the supermarket freezer case he didn’t realize had to be cooked before being served.
He still apologizes for that every year.
Well, as it turns out, there was no shortage of cranberry goo this year. There were plenty of cans on the shelf, even with only three days before Thanksgiving.
But the repeated lesson of the pandemic is not lost on me. I am learning, over and over again, to be grateful for even the smallest, most humble blessings I have.
As I heard the Kinship Christian Radio News Director Jay Rudolph say on air today, “Gratitude is the opposite of sinful pride.”
So, yes, I am grateful for this simple, humble, and delicious reminder of all the Thanksgivings past, the present Thanksgiving, and all those Thanksgivings (God willing) to come.
Someone asked today which of all God’s qualities we are most grateful for.
I consider the question impossible to answer, as it required me to somehow describe an indescribable God. But, as I ponder it, of all His qualities, the greatest is His love. Now, I know that’s the Sunday School answer. It’s the one that comes most easily and first to mind –and well it should! For the love of God is what defines Him. It is His pre-eminent, essential quality. It is a love so great, so wide, so high, so deep, it defies all description. Trying to describe God’s love is like trying to describe infinity. It is boundless, magnificent, glorious, endless, reckless, ferocious, tender, raging, beautiful, reckless, uncompromising, bold. It is as loud as the roar of the ocean and as quiet as a breeze whispering through the pines. It is everywhere at every time in every place. It is present in the makeup of every molecule, every atom, every particle in all the infinite vastness of the universe.
And all that infinite, indescribable love was wrapped in flesh and came to the earth in the person and being of Jesus Christ. All that love took on flesh, walked among us, and gave Himself for us that love and mercy and grace would restore us to fellowship, to a relationship with God the Father, that we could once again be restored and adopted into His own family as heirs of the kingdom of heaven and eternal life.
And I am like that can of cranberry goo. I am nothing special. I am not worthy of any glory or honor of my own. No spritz of aerosol whipped cream on my head. Not even a sprig of parsley behind my ear. But here I am, jiggling on the plate surrounded by a banquet I am not worthy to attend.
And yet, I am loved. A place has been prepared for me in the midst of all of this. I am welcome at this feast fit for a king –the King of kings.
I am welcome at the Throne of Grace.
Today’s Praise
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16(KJV)