November 12, 2023
Amos 5:18-24
Matthew 25:1-13
She was young, young enough that she took a nap every day. She was old enough to think that she didn’t need a nap every day, and she played hard enough that in mid-complaint about taking a nap every day, she’d fall asleep.
It didn’t stop her from complaining about it the next day, but I’m sure I did the same thing when I was that age.
Strangely, it was going to be her first Thanksgiving with a big group of her family. She had been born while her parents were living at quite a distance from grandparents and aunties and uncles and a big crowd of cousins. She’d only met a few of them, and only a household at a time: a couple of grandparents. An auntie and a cousin.
Thanksgiving promised to be a big crowd. She was all excited.
In the couple weeks before Thanksgiving, her parents started buying extra food for the things they’d bring to share: flour and sugar and eggs and pumpkin for pies. “Why are you getting those things?” she asked. “So we’ll have enough to share,” said her parents. “We don’t want to run out, do we?”
Oh, no, we don’t want to run out.
That took a new meaning about a week before Thanksgiving, because as the family was returning from some errands, the car ran out of gas. I guess everything had been so busy that the didn’t pay attention to the gas gauge. It all worked out fine. Some friends brought some gas so they could get to a gas station, and they got home a little later than expected, but it was barely an adventure.
“What happened?” she asked.
“The car ran out of gas,” said mother.
“Is that what happens when you don’t have enough?” she asked.
“It is with a car,” said father.
A couple days later she was all upset and started to cry.
“What’s wrong?” asked father and mother both.
“I don’t want to run out!” she sobbed.
“Run out of what?” they asked.
“I don’t want to run out of love on Thanksgiving!” she wailed.
“How are you going to run out?” asked mother, and she said, “Like the car! Or like falling asleep when I don’t want to nap!”
(I should probably mention that this was happening around nap time, which probably isn’t a surprise.)
“Tell you what,” said father. “We’ll see that you get filled up.”
“What?” she said.
“That’s right,” said mother. “We’ll take time each day to fill you up with love. You’ll have plenty of love for Thanksgiving.”
“How?” she asked, but you probably know the answer. Her parents gave her hugs, and they told her how much they loved her. They praised the cool and clever things she did, and when she misbehaved, they told her they loved her and how to do things better. They played games. They sang songs.
When Thanksgiving came she didn’t run out of love for her grandparents, or her aunties and uncles, or her big crowd of cousins. Nope. She didn’t run out of love at all.
She did skip her nap. She fell asleep in the car on the way home, but I’m sure it was because she was full of pie.
She never ran out of love at all.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories, then tell them from my memory of what I’ve written. Oh, and I improvise along the way, so what I wrote and how I tell it can be very different.
Photo by Eric Anderson
ordainedgeek 
A beautiful story.