Sand Mountain Sermonette 28
I Corinthians 10:31
Grandmother’s Thanksgiving Dinner!
“Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
I Corinthians 10:31
I loved my Grandmother Mabrey’s Thanksgiving dinners! My family and I would join my father’s parents for a delicious meal with all the trimmings always held at 3:00 pm at their home in Albertville, Alabama. Sometimes my grandparents would invite other relatives from my grandmother’s side of the family and/or my grandfather’s side of the family to attend.
The adults would sit at the grand table in the dining room. This table was always covered with my grandmother’s special white tablecloth featuring beautiful embroidery work and trimmed in lace. Atop the table covering you would find eight place settings featuring her crystal plates trimmed in red with matching stemmed goblets. In the kitchen adjacent the dining room, my grandfather would set up a card table with four chairs where my brother Tony and I would sit, and if we happened to be the only children that day, my grandparents would sit at our table and eat Thanksgiving dinner with us! How cool is that!
And oh, the food! My grandmother would feature her big and delicious turkey compete with mashed potatoes and gravy, good old-fashioned cornbread dressing, sweet potato casserole, and cranberry sauce to name a few items! And sometimes she would feature her layered peanut butter cake with glazed peanut butter icing, my favorite! And, to drink? My grandmother always made her delicious punch and earth-shattering iced tea!
My grandmother loved me! In 1972 when she was so sick with cancer and very weak, she told my grandfather that she still wanted “to cook for her boys;” meaning her son, my brother, and me. It wasn’t Thanksgiving at that time, but the principle was still the same. Whenever I sat down at my grandmother’s table, the fellowship with this beloved Christian woman who loved me, is what it was all about. She was fulfilling her mission to teach me to be a man of prayer and integrity whether it be over taking a bite of her delicious peanut butter cake or her mashed potatoes and gravy. Likewise, my grandfather, while eating a turkey leg with him, would be the Christian man who taught me to watch the crowd I would run around with and not to take part in dirty jokes.
When Paul was writing to the Corinthian Christians who were living in a pagan culture of their day, in essence he was pointing out that partaking of a religious feast means worshipping with the one worshipped at the feast. (Paul was cautioning Christians to watch out for meat purchased at the public market or presented at private dinner parties for it may have been consecrated to a pagan idol; god). Christian, when standing at Temptation’s Corner, you and I must ask ourselves, “Can I do it for God’s glory?” For the road you and I are to take is first to daily fellowship with God at His table, and then to do all that we do, each day, to the glory of God! May each day be Thanksgiving Day in your heart!
Pastor Louie