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Notice - the title is separated. In other words, Giving Thanks -this Thanksgiving, is more important than Thanksgiving itself. When we think of Thanksgiving, we quickly conjure up a picture of a big, fat turkey, with dressing, cranberry sauce, green beans, potato salad, pumpkin and sweet potato pies that make your mouth water, and anything else the imagination can come up with. Makes me hungry just thinking!

But, this season there is so much to give thanks for besides that Thanksgiving meal. The first thing I can think of is that God had allowed us to live to see the day once more. Only by His mercy and grace are we able to rise each morning, be able to say, "Thank you, Lord, for the day", and go on our way. Admit it; not too many get beyond that phase in the morning. People are too busy with school kids getting off to school, making it to work on time, reading the morning paper, or sleeping!

The next thing I can think of is our families. He has given each of us a family - if you are on earth, you have or have had a family. It took a Mother and Father to bring you into the world. Most of us have siblings. We may not be as close as we would like, whether we are close in miles or far away. But, we know we are family. And, daily, I give thanks to God above for . . .

Have you ever followed a bee around the garden, watching it enter flowers and lick up the nectar? Many flowers need bees for pollination, and bees need the flowers for nectar. These two creatures, plant and animal, need each other, and both would die out if it were not for the mutual services of the other.

The whole planet's biosphere is designed in this way, in a maze of complicated interactions, like one enormous machine. ?Biodiversity?, or 'the web of life? are names given to this interlocking interdependence, yet how many people consider its origin? Plants ?fix? nitrogen from the air, and add it to the soil; bacteria decompose humus, along with the help of worms and other recyclers of plant material. Humus feeds the plants, which also provide shelter and food to other creatures. Even the humble fungus is crucial to the planet's health.

Mycorrhizal (my-cor-rize-al) fungi have a mutually beneficial relationship with plants. As many as 90% interact with either general fungi, or specialized fungi. These fungi enable plants to obtain nutrients that would otherwise be insufficiently available ? the plants in turn provide carbohydrates for the fungi.

Because each plant or animal supplies . . .

There's a big beautiful oak tree in our back yard, its boughs heavy-laden with leaves--well, not any more! They will soon be falling--leaf by leaf--and covering the ground, crying out, "Residents--RAKE ME!" Now come on, SOMEBODY, let's rake leaves!

...the leaves of the HEART, that is! You see, far beyond that yard calling for our attention is a back yard that nobody sees--a yard surrounding the home where the King resides--and it's a mess! A yard full of yesterday's leaves never raked--long-held resentments, unforgiveness and pain; strong-holds of the past--sin, sorrow and safely- concealed strife. Not very attractive--but have no fear--the snow will soon cover up the unraked remains--no one will see, no one will ever know you never raked the leaves....

Not true! YOU know it, feel it, and subconsciously project it to those around you, believe it or not! Well, stop it! Get up and go out and rake the leaves! The Holy Spirit is a good supervisor and He will help you do the job! Bag them--and bring them to the Cross--every hurt, misunderstanding, past grievance, long-held bitterness; old, hanging-on hate; every fear, fault and failure. Let each die a proper death--at the Cross.

Then arise with new determination to welcome a new season . . .

Where did life come from? There are only two main views: the Biblical (Creationist) view and the ?natural? view (Naturalism or Evolutionism). The Biblical explanation describes just the ?bare bones? of the event. God spoke and life appeared. The naturalist explanation is a long-winded theory with many variations, many assumptions, many leaps of faith, and absolutely no evidence.

It is universally agreed today by all mainstream scientists that life comes only from life. It was once thought that flies were spontaneously generated by dead meat, but observations soon proved that flies come only from flies. This of course begs the question as to where the first flies came from, but the naturalist leaps in here and says ?first life? came from non-living chemicals, and that eventually out of that flies formed millions of years later. Just how this happened is never convincingly explained.

Francis Crick, an evolutionist who shared a Nobel prize for discovering the structure of DNA could not believe in spontaneous generation of ?first life? on Earth, so he proposed that life came to Earth from outer space ? but this only shifted the problem one step further away. How did ?first life? appear somewhere else? There is no known mechanism in chemistry whereby non-living elements can form a . . .