I also love making the side dishes and pies and cooking the turkey bird. Love it all, start to finish. But I have to confess that my very favorite part of it all is setting the table. I will probably set it early on, maybe even Wednesday night, so I can feast my eyes on it. I will enjoy putting every fork and spoon and goblet in exactly the right spot designated for such things. Ah, cultural expectations galore!  Tradition galore!

I love making the table look beautiful. I’ve been thinking about what tablecloth or runner I’m going to use. This year it’s a Thanksgiving runner from a few years back over a pale green tablecloth from a few years back. Sounds weird, but it looks so calm and fall and festive. And since we are having a smallish group this year (just seventeen!) I can use my granny’s crystal, which I also love. The ten children will not use Granny’s Fostoria, no. But I will bless the seven adults with it. And all the silver has been polished (went through a whole tub of polish) which makes the table sparkle like nothing else. What better time to use the family heirlooms?

The leaves will be in the table and extra chairs hijacked from the four corners of the house. The white napkins will be ironed. That’s not what I do every week. Goodness no! But for Thanksgiving they will be pressed. The candles will be lit. The flowers (I bought tulips) will be just hitting their zenith. Glorious!

The place cards will be on, the salad plates (so the jello doesn’t melt into the dressing) in position, the dessert forks above the plates, and the silly turkey salt and pepper shakers will be stationed where they will feel important.

I’ve wondered what it is that I enjoy so much about the table setting. I love the way it looks when it’s set. I love all the rules about what goes where. I love all the memories associated with the table. I love the symbolism of the table as we all gather around. We sing “We Thank Thee Our Father” every year at Thanksgiving, and that’s something my husband brought over from his family traditions.

And I love, love, love filling the table with all my people and seeing them enjoy it. Isn’t God good that He gives us such potent, powerful work to do? Work that we can do with our own hands? Work that will bless future generations? Is there a mess afterward? Oh, mercy, yes. Something epic. But that’s my cue to put on the Christmas music!

Blessings on all your prep work, and may your tables shine with God’s goodness and Grandma’s china!

First of all, in secular events, front row seats are prized. Think about concerts and sporting events: the front row seats are the most coveted seats. But at church, many people shy away from the front row. Now I’m not talking about a conference with a big-name speaker up in front. At that kind of event, the front rows are taken. I’m talking about church. (And I suppose, if a worship service is conducted like a concert or spectator sport, the front rows might be crowded.)  But  how often do most folks shy away from sitting in the front row Sunday morning? And why do they do that? What’s the difference between a rock concert and a worship service? A whole lot, that’s what.

Now from a human level, when you are the speaker, it’s difficult to speak over three or four empty rows. One of the duties of the speaker is to overcome the rhetorical distance so he or she can connect with the audience. But at church, the saints are not an audience; they are worshipers. But if the minister has to preach over a few empty rows, it is more of a challenge than if he has a crowded front row.

The front row is the most vulnerable spot in church. Not only are you under the pastor’s eye, but the rest of the congregation can watch you from the back. It’s much more comfortable in an obscure back row seat. The front row can make you feel like you are exposed. At a concert or a football game, this is not the case. Worship is when we meet with the living God, so it’s tempting to draw back.

But let’s look at this from a spiritual or symbolic angle. When we sit in the front row, we are crowding in to meet with God, eager to be near Him, hungry for His word. Consider these verses:

“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8).

“It is good for me to draw near to God. I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all thy works” (Psalm 73:28).

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13).

When we sit in the front row (or rows), we are drawing near to God. We are near the pulpit and near the table, eager to receive the Word, hungry for the bread and the wine. We are drawing near to God so He will draw near to us.

An empty front row suggests fear. Or apathy. It could also come from a false sense of politeness: Who am I to sit in the front row? But we are invited to come, so we should crowd in!

Of course we could sit in the front row for all the wrong reasons, and we could sit in the back for all the right reasons. But my point is this: feeling vulnerable isn’t bad. Draw near to God. Sit near the pulpit. Crowd in. Be eager to be fed.

We worship with our bodies: “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1). We worship with our bodies, and this certainly includes where we put them. This implies a glad surrender, a sweet resignation to God.

You may feel vulnerable, exposed, in the front row. But if you are there for the right reason, you are most protected,  sheltered under His wing as you draw near to Him. And certainly, if you are in the back for good reason, you can draw near just as well, and you should. Wherever we sit, we should be crowding in, eager for His blessing and hungry for His food.

Before I get started in the kitchen, I wanted to take a minute to reflect on what it is we are doing out there in the kitchen up to our elbows in pumpkin pie and all the rest. We Americans are blessed to have a national holiday devoted to Thanksgiving, and it’s a wonder that it is still recognized. The obvious question that such a holiday should provoke is “Thank whom?”

Though Thanksgiving is not a day on the Christian calendar, it is still a very happy providence that He, our good and gracious God, arranged to have us Americans thank Him for our manifold blessings by sitting down at a table once a year and rejoicing together around an abundance of food! My memories of Thanksgiving stretch back to the shining white table of my mother with Dad standing at the head carving the turkey. Mom’s crystal and china and silver were polished and sparkling. We children were dressed up in our Sunday best. I can see it now!

Mom always started the day before Thanksgiving by making the cornbread for the dressing and simmering the turkey neck and giblets for the gravy. I confess that though I have made that dressing from start to finish (it also required cooking up bacon, sauteing the veggies, etc.), I have adopted the short-cut box of cornbread dressing now. But it is always cornbread dressing in honor of the way Mom did it. And I imagine all of you have certain protocols for Thanksgiving that date back to your own childhood, some jello recipe or special side dish that reaches back in your family tree of recipes. I always make at least one pecan pie because that’s what we had growing up, and it is undeniably fabulous.

My table never reached the same glory of Mom’s, but she set the pattern for me and always made the day a sweet one.  Now my parents sit down at my brother and sister-in-law’s table with their children, and I know their table is loaded down with my sister-in-law’s loving preparations. I smile thinking about all the many tables across this country all serving up basically the same menu on the same day in November each year. Tradition is a wonderful thing!

So we thank God for His kind provisions for another year. We thank Him for sustaining us and keeping us from our infancy, childhood, and beyond. We thank Him for this wayward country that He continues to hold together with His hand. And we pray for Him to kindly turn us back.

And we thank Him for our parents, our children, our grandchildren. We thank Him for our warm homes, for the glistening snow and the shocking blue sky above it. We thank Him for abundance of food, for the cranberry sauce and the hot rolls and the steaming mashed potatoes. We thank Him for the pools of gravy splashing over it all. We thank Whom?  We thank the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! Have fun in your kitchens today! May you have a sweet day of preparation, so that you can rejoice around your tables tomorrow! You are bestowing an important memory on your children. You are establishing them in their faith. Don’t underestimate the powerful impact of a slice of pumpkin pie slathered in whipped cream!

Today my husband preached a Thanksgiving sermon, and I sat in a different row than usual with my five Merkle grandchildren. Funny how being in a different seat can change the whole experience. The kids were great, I got to sit behind the Wilson family grandkids, and I have always wanted to be over there with them all during the Lord’s Supper, so it was sweet indeed. (The Janks were somewhere in the back and I didn’t get a peep at them until after the service when all the grandkids make a bee-line for Doug to give him a hug, and then a bee-line for me because I have the treats in my purse to hand out.) But there I go digressing again.

The point of the sermon was very applicable to all of us who will be putting on our battle gear in the kitchen tomorrow and the next day and the next until the Great Feast Day. He was speaking about rejoicing in the evil day, and how our days are just as evil (or almost) as the evil days Paul was speaking of in Ephesians 5:16 where we are exhorted to redeem the time (verse 16). The verses following (in this context of evil days) include verse 19 where we are told to sing and make melody in our hearts to the Lord, “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (verse 20).

So when our president and our congress are doing evil things (which they are) and we see our country circling the drain (which it is), and we wonder what we are supposed to do in such evil times, then here are our marching orders: throw a big party to thank Him for all things.

My husband pointed out that we are not to fight for Thanksgiving but with Thanksgiving. He said something like this: Pull your thanksgiving out of the scabbard and start fighting with it. How do we fight the horrible things that are happening in our country? By sitting down around our tables and thanking God: thanking Him with the wine and the turkey and the mashed potatoes and the pies. (I’m afraid my husband mentioned the pies quite a few times.)

What a good way to fight. This is something we know how to do. And those of us in the kitchen should put on our aprons with a good will and get our thanksgiving out of the scabbard and have at it. God loves it when we feast before Him, rejoicing in His goodness and glory.

So go to it ladies! And have a very blessed Thanksgiving.

But now that we are just a couple of days away from the first Sunday of Advent, I thought I could safely share a few of our celebratory traditions. Since we have a Sabbath dinner on Saturday night, we will be kicking off Advent tomorrow. After dinner each week I have a little Advent gift for the grandchildren. So tomorrow night they will get their Christmas jammies. I want them to enjoy them for the whole month of December, so that’s why they are the first Advent gift.  I also give each family an Advent calendar, the kind you can buy at Hallmark that have little doors that open with a Scripture verse under each one telling the Christmas story.

The second week I will give them each an ornament because by that time they are probably getting their trees up, so they can take them home and hang them on the tree. The third week will be the gingerbread house kit. Last year we had a marathon gingerbread house decorating extravaganza! It was actually quite a lot of fun and with a close supervision, they all did just great. I’m pretty sure I passed out after decorating last year, but as you can see, I revived,  and now I will do it all again! This year I will get one house for each family, and the kids can help decorate one together (not one for each child). That way I think I will have a higher survival rate. Then the last week each child will get a book.

We enjoy spreading the gifts out through the month, and it gives the children such a lot of cousin fun, particularly when they all pile into their jammies! The individual families sometimes have daily Advent treats (candy or outings or small gifts) but I stick with one-a-week at my house.

The Sabbath dinner fare is on the lighter side during the month. Since we just had our Thanksgiving feast, I think tomorrow will be a salad and homemade pizza (with help from my pizza expert girls) and next week might be something like cheese and potato soup.  We will build a fire in the fireplace and enjoy the northern Idaho winter ambiance: could be rain, hail, sleet, slush, or snow. But it’s Christmas inside!

Here is my humble table so far today. It is a very small group because we are missing seven who celebrate without us in the UK and six (the Nate Wilsons) because of sickness. But luckily we are having six guests or we would be very hard up! Yes, I do like red….especially this time of year when it is gray outside. You can see that it is nothing fancy pants. Just fun. We have little wine glasses for the little kids (yes, they get a sip for the toast). And I bought some festive paper plates (pumpkins and whatnot) for dessert. I’ll probably sprinkle a few candy corns around Daphne and Lina’s plates, and I will send half a pie to the poor pitiful Wilsons!

And one more thing: the all-important apron. You simply must look snazzy while slaving away in the kitchen. You need not one, but an assortment, so you can pick an apron that matches your outfit, the season, and your mood. I might sip some wine while I cook, but not unless it is after 5 PM. If I started sipping when I start cooking (which is often in the morning), my husband might be alarmed!

If you would like the recipe for Miner’s Camp Pie, here it is below. I do not use a throw-away pie pan for this, because you set the pie straight on the table looking beautiful for everyone to ahhh over. And it really requires a deep dish because the meat just mounds up beautifully (this is not a flat pie). If you have little leaf cookie cutters (or you may be able to free lance), they make nice decorations for the top of the pie. And do not be scared of the mushrooms. I have several non-mushroom eaters who love this pie even though it has mushrooms. So do not leave them out! I will post a picture later if my pies look photo-worthy. Otherwise, just imagine a couple of lovely golden pies on my cheery table.

6-8 servings

4 T. butter

2 c. minced onions (my shortcut is to use frozen onions here)

8 oz. coarsely chopped mushrooms (I chop in my food processor)

2# lean ground beef, pork, or combo

1/4 c. dry red wine

2. slices white bread, crumbled

2 t. salt

1/2 black pepper

1/2 t. thyme

8 oz. cream cheese, diced

3/4 c. minced fresh parsley

Onion Pastry:

2 c. flour

3 T. dried onion flakes

1 t. salt

1 t. sugar

1/4 t. pepper

3.4 c. well-chilled butter, cut into 12 pieces

1 egg, beaten

4-6 T. ice water

Glaze:

1 egg yolk beaten with 1 t. water

In a large, heavy skillet, melt butter over med-low heat. Add onions and cook until transparent, stirring frequently. Add mushrooms and meat. Increase heat to high and stir until meat is no longer pink. Add wine and stir for about 8 minutes. Pour off remaining liquied. Stir in bread, salt, pepper and thyme. Blend in cream cheese and parsley. Cool to room temp. Can be prepared 1 day ahead and refrigerated. Bring to room temp before continuing.

To prepare the onion pastry: stir flour, onion flakes, salt, sugar, and pepper together in bowl. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add egg and 2 T. water; blend until dough begins to stick together. Add remaining water a little at a time if dough is dry. This may be done in a food processor. Gather dough together. Divide into 2 balls, one of which is 2 inches in diameter. Flatten into discs. Wrap tightly and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Can be prepared up to 3 days ahead.

Spoon meat into 10″ pie plate. Brush upper edge and outer rim of plate with glaze. On lightly foured surace, roll larger piece of onion pastry out into 12″ circle. Cut small hole in center. Place dough over filling, centering steam hole. Press overhanging dough firmly to edge of plate. Press tines of fork along rim. Roll out small dough ball until 1/4″ thick. Cut out decorative shapres (leaves are nice). Brush pie with glaze. Place decorations on crust, pressing gently. Brush again with glaze. Bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes or until golden brouwn. Let the pie cool for ten minutes before serving.

So I have a few suggestions for you, and these are real-life suggestions that I use, not theoretical suggestions that I would use if I didn’t have a house staff to put the meal on for me.

Hot tip #1: Keep the menu simple. This is a weekly celebration for your family, so you want to make kid-friendly food that will go together easily, not a labor-intensive menu that requires all day in the kitchen. Otherwise you will give up after two weeks of Sabbath celebration. I tend to go for the large piece of meat. You put it in the oven and ignore it while you are getting everything else ready, and if you are lucky, you will have leftovers you can work into the week’s menu. My son-in-law is an expert meat carver, so I know the meat will always look gorgeous on the platter.

Hot tip #2: Use throw-away pans as much as possible. Since I am going to transfer the food from the pan to the serving dish anyway,  it is a bonus if I can just throw away the pan instead of adding it to the pile to be washed. I used to fill two serving pieces for each of the menu items, one for each end of the eighteen-foot table. But that just doubles my clean-up, so I went back to using one.  We simply pass it all the way around, and I can refill if necessary.

Hot tip #3: Do as much ahead of time as is feasible. We are having Miner’s Camp Pie tomorrow, so I cooked up the filling today, and it is waiting in the fridge to be assembled tomorrow. You can do this with plenty of dishes, so take advantage of the make-ahead possibilities or crock-pot recipes. (It also means that some of the mess is taken care of ahead of time as well.) Desserts can usually be made ahead. Make two and pop one in your freezer that you can pull out in a couple of weeks.

Hot tip #4: Make use of some of the short-cuts available at the grocery store. I love those Rhodes Texas rolls. I know, they are frozen! But the kids adore them still warm from the oven with honey butter. I buy the lettuce in the bag that is ready to toss into the salad bowl (but I do make the dressing from scratch because I haven’t found a grocery store version that compares to my daughter-in-law’s recipe). I often use frozen diced onions (a super time and mess saver), cheese that is already grated, and frozen shredded potatoes for a cheesy potato side dish. Of course if you want to make your rolls from scratch (I used to), then go for it. But I am hoping to last another twenty years or so at this Sabbath celebrating, and if I don’t find some clever shortcuts, I will burn out next week.

Hot tip #5: Set the table ahead of time. It sometimes takes me ages to figure out the seating arrangement if we are having guests, so getting that done early in the day helps me relax. I have little ceramic place cards that I write the names on with a dry erase marker. (Guests appreciate seeing where they are supposed to sit.) Since most weeks we have to add all eleven leaves to the table and carry up chairs from downstairs, it is a pretty big production to get the table set. (My dream is a house with a big dining room where I can keep the table set up!)

Hot tip #6: Invite people who like to help! When a guest offers to help, never say no. If they ask if they can bring a dish, let them. If they want to help with the dishes, why not?

Hot tip #7: Load the coffee pot before dinner. Buy some cute paper dessert plates  and save yourself the extra dishes.

Hot tip #8: Sometimes we serve all the little kids’ plates before we sit down. Their meat is already cut, the potatoes are cooling, and Mom and Dad can actually settle down and serve themselves once we are seated.

Hot tip #9: Keep it fun. Don’t require everyone to be dressed up. Come clean and comfortable, whatever that is. Don’t stress out about spills. Sometimes I even keep a bright wipe-up rag nearby for parents to grab if something goes over. (That way they won’t use my white dinner napkins!)

Hot tip #10: Save the handwash-only dishes and silver and crystal for the High Sabbath celebrations like Easter and Christmas, and use the kind that can go into the dishwasher for your regular Sabbath dinners (unless you live with someone who loves to wash dishes and polish silver).

Finally, if you are a wife and mother of a young family, and you’re trying to get this thing off the ground, consider asking another family to do this with you. You can rotate houses, share the load of cooking and cleaning, and enjoy learning how to celebrate the Sabbath together. Pick a family with children who will get along with yours. This way it will be fun for everyone. If you are unmarried, consider asking a young family or a few other unmarried folks to team up with you.

Sabbath dinner is not only a big time commitment, but it obviously costs a bit for a family to celebrate weekly. I look for what meat is on sale, I buy our favorite wines in the big bottles, but I expect for our Sabbath dinner to be the most expensive meal of the week. And all those little extras, like chocolate candies on the table, flowers and candles and wine, certainly increase the tab. But consider it an investment with big dividends, both short-term and long-term. And if you simply cannot afford a piece of meat, you can still celebrate with whatever you have. The important thing is to offer it all to the Lord and ask Him to bless it.

Do you have more time-saving Sabbath dinner tips to share? Please do!

Romans chapter one describes the downhill slide of the unrighteous. They have willfully suppressed what God has plainly displayed to them (even His eternal power and Godhead) and so they are without excuse. “They did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened”(vs. 21). In the remaining verses of chapter one we see that “God gave them up” and “God gave them over to a debased mind.” In other words, God does not withhold His righteous judgment until after they have died. The unrighteous begin to experience the wrath of God while they live, for what else is God’s wrath if it isn’t being given up and given over? We Christians ought to recognize God’s judgment when we see it, and this chapter of Romans gives us a vivid description.

But my point in bringing all this up is not to discuss God’s righteous judgment, but rather to point out how central thanksgiving is to the Christian life. God hates ingratitude, as seen above. When we refuse to be thankful, we are acting like those who “suppress the truth” about God, and our gracious God does not overlook such behavior. When we render thanksgiving and praise to our generous God, we are acting in accordance to our redeemed natures, we are doing what creatures should do. The atheist and the agnostic have no one to thank but themselves. Evolution claims that we created ourselves. The unbelieving world has been given over to uncleanness, vile passions, and a debased mind (verses 24, 26, 28).

But the Christian is to overflow in thankfulness. “But be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:18-21). Notice the words always and all things. We are to be giving thanks constantly and for everything.

Now some want to rush to point out things that might be hard to give thanks for. (“Surely God doesn’t want me to thank Him for this or for that.”) This is a bit of a trick to try to change the subject. (“Let’s not talk about all the ways I should be obeying now but I am not obeying….let’s talk about the difficult theological issues involved here….”)

It would be far better to rush to all the many things for which it is easy to give thanks, things that we have neglected to thank God for and blessings we have overlooked. And as we learn to give thanks for all these things, we will have a different perspective on those things that seem hard.

We are to enter into His gates with thanksgiving (Ps. 100:4), we are to pray with thanksgiving (Phil. 4:6; Col. 4:2), we are to come before His presence with thanksgiving (Ps. 95:2). We are to offer to God thanksgiving (Ps. 50:14). And this just scratches the surface.

What hinders thanksgiving? Unconfessed sin, disobedience, discontent, laziness, bitterness, pride. What restores a thankful heart? Confessing our sins to God and to those we have wronged. Receiving forgiveness, being put right with our Creator so that we can speak our native tongue of thanksgiving.

As we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, let’s render all thanks to God and cultivate thanksgiving as a spiritual discipline. Then we can become fluent in the language we were designed to speak. And that pleases and glorifies our very good and gracious God, which in turn makes the biggest turkey and the most beautiful table setting a fitting offering of praise and thanksgiving to God.