Daily Reading for November 25 • Thanksgiving Day

O God, it is good to be alive,
and numbered with the people
whom thou has made:
and I thank thee for thy gift of life.

O God, it is good to have the power of thought,
and to seek and learn and know:
and I thank thee for thy gift of mind.

O God, it is good to dwell beneath the sun
in the world which is thy handiwork:
and I thank thee for earth’s beauty,
and thy rule within its laws.

O God, it is good to come to each new day,
and to find the passing years
a cure for wounds innumerable,
and I thank thee for the ministries of time.

O God, it is good to count in word and deed
for ends beyond our own:
and I thank thee for thy use of me
if I have been of any service to thy purposes.

O God, it is good to rejoice and to be glad,
and I thank thee for each person,
for each experience of life,
that has brought me happiness.

O God, it is good to feel the disciplines
that school the spirit,
and I thank thee for the trials and troubles
which have wrought in me some hardihood of soul.

O God, it is good to have thine everlasting arms beneath us,
and I thank thee now for all thy mercies,
both temporal and spiritual,
those I have known, those I have not recognized,
wherewith thou has upheld me
in thy wisdom, power, and love.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him, all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heav’nly host:
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

“An Act of Thanksgiving to God for Great Blessings” by Miles Lowell Yates, quoted in Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, compiled by Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2004. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com