Simple Praise

Our church choir has been practicing a song called Simple Praise.

As I walk the country roads ...
As I sit at my computer ...
As I've ridden the 4-wheeler to help move cattle ...
As I've baked and chopped and stirred ...
And, yes, even as I sat in the dentist's chair with yet another tooth problem ...
The words and music of this song have drifted through my mind, over and over again.

And when I've been at choir, pictures have floated into my mind as we've sung the words.

It's about thanks giving. Not necessarily Thanksgiving, though it's certainly the perfect time to recognize God's gifts and blessings all around us. But our thanks giving should be every day, not just on the fourth Thursday in November each year.

  I found one choir had uploaded Simple Praise by Craig Courtney and Pamela Martin to youtube. If you'd like, listen to the song (the link is at the bottom of this post) and look at the illustrations that have been floating through my mind and are now assembled together, kind of like that other favorite song of the season, We Gather Together.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours from The County Line.

 For a canvas of colors

For a concert of sound

For the unfolding seasons

The earth spinning round

 For the birth of each sunrise

For the sky set ablaze

For these simple gifts

We give simple praise

 Simple praise for the Giver

And thanks to the One

Who has given us breath

And given His Son

 

To the Giver of blessings

For all of our days

  For these simple gifts

 
We give simple praise

For the love of a mother

For the touch of a hand

For the deeper emotions

We can't understand

For the lessons we learn

From the trials we face

For these simple gifts

We give simple praise

The heart of the Giver

 The hand of the One

From whom every blessing

Of living has come

 For measureless mercy and limitless grace

For these simple gifts

We give simple praise.

The Power of Thank You

They are two little words. You can count the letters without even using your toes to help your fingers out. But they are oh so powerful.

THANK YOU.

I was again reminded of the power of "Thank You" when I opened my mailbox recently. It looked like a regular old manilla envelope. But when we opened the flap, we found a rainbow of colors and carefully penciled words.

A cover letter read:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Fritzemeier,

Thank you so much for being a part of the 4th grade Farm Ag Day! The kids left with a wealth of information and some even chose new future careers. We appreciate you preparing meaningful lessons for our students. We have been working diligently during our writing class each week to explain our favorite parts of the day. As the kids illustrated and wrote, they enjoyed the information presented, especially when they had hands-on or visual examples. Thank you again for assisting us in teaching these students about agriculture in our area!

Sincerely,
Ms. Tina Landon, Mrs. Kendra Ploutz and Mrs. Laura Vague

Included were 10 handwritten and illustrated notes, some in cursive and some in block letters. Each thanked us for taking the time to make a presentation at Ellsworth County's Ag Day in September. They mentioned everything from Antarctica to tasting the wheat kernels.


They obviously listened to us, even when we didn't have a cute baby calf or a dairy cow that needed milking (though we did have a bushel of wheat they loved getting their hands in.)

Each note made this farm couple smile.

I was amused by this one. It had some erasures underneath, right after it talked about a station where they played with "goop." I have to wonder if the author really liked the goop station better. But she drew a colorful photo that truly illustrated the day, complete with a few raindrops and our most popular attraction.

There is power in THANK YOU ... especially when it comes fully illustrated in crayon and painstakingly-formed letters.

A random note: One of the teachers, Tina Landon, was our daughter's teacher at Stafford. She was the reason all the little girls wanted to become teachers at the time. One of Jill's classmates now teaches at Ellsworth with Ms. Landon. It is indeed a small world.

(Even though I only scanned 4 of the 10 notes, we loved each one of them. Click on the notes so you can read the text.)