Philip's Talents For Christ Entry

Philip is participating in "Talents For Christ". TFC is a program to challenge students who are actively involved in General Association of Regular Baptist Churches to develop their God-given talents for ministry within their local churches and to honor those who demonstrate exceptional preparation and skill. Philip has chosen to enter in the area of writing. As part of his requirements, he must put his articles somewhere so that people may have access to them and be able to read them. He has asked me to post them for him.

A Thanksgiving Story
By: Philip Cox
Genre: short story
1,308 total words
119 total quoted words


It is a cold, dark night in Chicago on the evening of November twenty-third. It is only hours away from an early Thanksgiving but as the warmth of the sun sets and the cold chills from the wind become ever so much stronger, a man walks ever so much slower than he did hours earlier. The weather continually worsened the man’s condition continually weakened. He grew colder than the breeze that blew into his face. He walked with his steps becoming smaller it was as if his shoes collected all of the litter from the metropolitan area in which he was walking. As the weary man slowly trudged ahead he discovered himself stumbling on to a nearly deserted subway train where he was left with only his thoughts and gnarly rats to keep him company. He realized the walk he had decided to go on only hours ago took him farther than he would have ever thought to have gone. He remembered, while he rode the train back to his lonely home, his wife.

Mourning her recent death, he pondered the many Thanksgivings they had spent together. He thought of the wonderful smell of the turkey she had cooked so many times and how much better the taste was than the smell. Though the turkey was delicious, he thought of the golden sweet potatoes with marshmallows, the fluffy white mashed potatoes with turkey gravy, the greenbean casserole with those golden brown onions on top, the soft buttery rolls, and the traditional homemade pumpkin pie. All of these were things the man had condemned to the past as he looked toward to a lonely Thanksgiving this year; since his wife had passed away soon after the previous Christmas.

The man had five children, but all had families of their own now. The man had fought with his children at his wife’s funeral, due to his anger and grief. He had made comments that he still wished he had not said after all. These nine months or so, he had heard little from his family; a card here, a phone call there, but nothing that was said could break the ice in the conversations that were attempted by the man or his children.

When the man’s train ride ended, he was almost fully rested but still slightly more frustrated after dwelling on his past transgressions. He started the short walk he had left to get home.

As the bitter man opens the door to his home, once again his thoughts are flooded with endearing memories of a home full of children noisily running about, preparing for the next morning. These thoughts are rudely cut short with the sound of the man’s creaking door as he shuts it.

The man wanders up the stairs to his bedroom, collapsing on his bed. He glances across his room and notices a picture of himself fishing with his wife. There on the table next to the picture was something he had not seen in quite some time, his Bible. He rolled off the bed and sat down in the chair next to the table where his Bible collected dust all of these months. As he picked up the Bible he noticed a bookmark. Curiously he opens it up to the marked section and begins to read the highlighted chapter.

To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born,
And a time to die;
A time to plant,
And a time to pluck what is planted;
A time to kill,
And a time to heal:
A time to break down,
And a time to build up:
A time to weep,
And a time to laugh;
A time to mourn,
And a time to dance;
. . .
Nothing can be added to it,
And nothing taken from it.
God does it, that men should fear before Him.
That which is has already been,
And what is to be has already been;
And God requires an account of what is past.
Ecclesiastes 3: 1- 15

As the man read these things, he wept. With the thoughts of lonely days stretching out before him, he prayed for forgiveness and that his children would forgive him as well. For the first night in months, this man slept through the night, without waking until his alarm sounded at five in the morning. The man awoke with a new emotion, one he had not felt in such a long time. Now he felt so alive, that when he went down to the mall, as he did every morning, and began to walk, he could not keep to himself what had happened. So he willingly shared it with the old friends he was walking with. They were so excited to see a smile on his face that they invited him out for some breakfast. The man said he must decline their invitation for he already had made some plans.

As he left the mall, the sun shone so bright and the wind was a cold friend on his cheek, as opposed to the night before, when the wind bit him so viciously. The man proceeded to drive home as the snow began to descend. The sun he had just seen was slowly fading into a white cloud. When the man arrived home, there was already an inch of snow outdoors; this caused the man to question going through with his plans. Ultimately, he decides that nothing should keep him from visiting his family on this Thanksgiving morning. The man slipped into a nice sweater and jeans, put on his coat one more time, then fought his way though two inches of fluffy snow into the car.

The man’s determination to fight nature was very foolish. With a predicted ten to twelve inches of snow in thirty mile an hour winds, the man’s trip across town would take longer than expected, if he even makes it all of the way. As the weather continued to rapidly deteriorate, the man became nervous. He fervently prayed for his safe journey to his son’s house. After praying, he decided he would press on, trusting in God’s provision through the cold snowy weather towards his eldest son’s home, where they had always held Thanksgiving. The day had gone fast, as it was nearing four in the afternoon, he realized he was finally at his destination.

He sat in his car for about ten minutes, having second thoughts about coming and making things right again. With his pride taking over he decided it wasn’t worth coming for. Disturbing his thoughts of returning home with almost no fuel, there is a knock on his window. The man started to roll down his car window, but before the window was completely down, someone outside the car started to say they noticed he had been sitting there a while and offered to help him with some directions. The old man replied with a simple answer “No thank you, son. All I need is your forgiveness right now.”

The interrupting man stared into the car then he suddenly exclaimed, “Dad.” The man’s son reached through the Window, and hugged him, replying, “I’d forgive you for anything as long as you stay for supper.”

The old man said that he would love to stay. The father and son walked into the house together. The smell of the turkey just about knocked the older man over. The older man never expected to be welcomed by his family. He was so anxious to eat, that when he did eat he swore they stole a meal from a king, which they all laughed at his joke.