We are close to Thanksgiving, and while this is a Christmas story, it is a story of gratitude.

On Christmas morning I was driving early to our home from the parsonage. The rest of our family gathered there already, but I needed to stay for the midnight Christmas Eve candlelight and Communion. I love the service, and as pastor I have to be there, but it can be lonely on Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning was bright and clear, and I loaded up Abigayle the Destroyer into her kennel placed in the back of the Chevy HHR and headed home. Somewhere past Millikan on highway 6, headed toward College Station, I saw a man in the grass off the highway. He was carrying some flowers, and kneeling in front of three white crosses near the shoulder of the highway, those temporary crosses marking the tragedy of lost lives.

It was like an awakening, an epiphany. My griping to myself about how much I worked, how little I was appreciated, how much this or how little that, faded into nothing but gratitude as I headed toward our home in College Station on Christmas morning to greet my family, who where there waiting for me to arrive.