Lenten Blog – Day 23 – Baptismal Covenant, Part 8

Celebrant	Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
People	I will, with God's help.

When Miriam and I were first married we’d spend our Thanksgiving at her Aunt’s house.  My Aunt and Uncle would make an amazing spread of food and family, extended family and friends would fill the house with dozens of people.

I’d often end up in the downstairs watching football and fighting off the tryptophan coma.

As our family grew, though, we transitioned away from my Aunt and Uncle’s and started doing our own Thanksgiving.  The amount of people (and food) at my Aunt’s was sometimes overwhelming and it was hard to catch-up with who you wanted to talk to.  Eventually we started having friends and family at our house.

Depending on if Mark and Kim and Lorena were going to see Kim’s brother, we’d have them and, of course, my mom and Miriam’s parents and Miriam’s brother and wife and daughter and then a couple other friends and what once was just a visit to a relative’s house for free food and drink and football - became an event in our own house.  That’s cool.  I actually like entertaining, even if it IS a lot of work.

Earlier in Thanksgiving week (which I usually take off for vacation), I had talked to our across-the-street neighbor who explained he was going to brine his turkey this particular Thanksgiving.  Sounded good, but I usually cook mine in a plastic bag (which doesn’t sound good).

On Thanksgiving morning, Miriam and I were prepping everything as best as we could when our Neighbor’s daughter came over to wish us a Happy Thanksgiving and Miriam asked her what they were doing and she said:  “We were going to have turkey, but the turkey is still frozen in the brine.”

Miriam came to me and said:  “We have to invite them over for dinner.  We can’t let them not have a Thanksgiving dinner.”  I rationed that the turkey would probably thaw out eventually and did we really need five more people to go with our ten or so?  But Miriam was adamant that neighbors help neighbors and, of course, I agreed.

The invitation was made and we had five more wonderful guests come over and partake in our Thanksgiving feast.

They were our neighbor.

Certainly this passage of the Baptismal Covenant is taking the word “neighbor” and expanding that to be something not so literal as the person who lives across the street or next door or kitty-corner and I get that and I need to be reminded that we’re all neighbors on this big blue marble.

What a wonderful world it would be to put our neighbor’s first and show Christ’s love and forgiveness to them.  Yet, something I have to work on - with God’s help.