"I give you thanks, O Lord, with all my heart."
Psalm 138:1 (NLT)

The Thanksgiving holiday is a good time to focus on our blessings and declare our gratitude to God.

In 1621, following harvest, the pilgrims set aside a time of Thanksgiving to God. Much like we enjoy a day with family and friends, they celebrated with deer and turkey hunted by the men, and corn, beans, and pumpkins the women cooked. Even the children gathered nuts and berries from the woods.

Indians joined the Pilgrims for a three-day feast. The Indians listened as the Pilgrims read the Bible and raised special prayers of thanksgiving to God. It was a happy time of fellowship in what we would consider very sparse surroundings. God was pleased and received their words of thanks.

However, thanks must become a daily, hourly, even a minute by minute occasion in our lives. Thanksgiving is woven through . . .

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 . . .

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 . . .

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 . . .