Why I Feel Blessed

I walk into the sanctuary just before 10:00 am on Sunday morning.  Often, Patrick is already rehearsing something for the morning's service, and as I take my seat I can feel the vibrations of the pipes as the most glorious music fills the room and my soul.  The familiar faces and friendly greetings are a comfort, and life's anxieties begin to fade.  The next half hour is about music and working hard to meet the technical demands of the music we sing, but as the morning progresses, our role transcends technicality.  Together, we sing to the glory of God.  I know that I am blessed to have found this choir family and to have been welcomed into this church home.  Like most people, I hardly feel blessed all of the time, and all too often I take these blessings for granted.  But from that first moment on a Sunday morning until we finally rise together and sing "Praise God from whom all blessings flow...," I look around me and I smile.  What brought me here was the music, but I have found much, much more.         Katharine Lowery

Every day, I try to take a few moment and think “why I feel blessed” and I always think about the people that surround me. I feel blessed to have a very loving and supportive family and I am very fortunate to still have both of my parents, as I get older, more and more of my friends don’t have their parents to look to for support and advice. My dad, a retired urologist, meant a lot to this community and just recently, I was making a purchase where the owner of the store asked how my dad was doing. I asked him if he was a patient of my dad and he told me that his 21 month-old son had gotten cancer in his kidney and that dad treated his son until the boy passed at age 5, the man’s son would be 38 today. The man was very grateful of my dad’s knowledge and compassion. Life is all about the relationships that we have and I feel blessed.        Hal Bates

Through my family, I have been taught and shown love.  Through my children, I have opportunities to develop angels to help make the world better.  Through this church, I have experienced God’s peace and God’s charge.  Through my friends, I have been given support, dignity, and wisdom.
Thanks be to God… Eddie Gant

Every morning I wake up and before I get out of bed, I say “this is the day the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” This passage is quickly followed by “And the Lord shall preserve thy going out and coming in from this time forth and even forevermore.”  I learned these two verses when I was a young girl in Sunday school. I start the day with these verses and use them at other times during the day to remind me of God’s presence.  At night, our family says the Lord’s Prayer together before our two daughters go to bed.  What a wonderful blessing to end the day with the Lord’s Prayer with my family. I feel blessed that our daughters have First Presbyterian Church to teach them about the Bible and God.  Their experiences with the Carol Choir and Covenant Choir have been a blessing not only to them but to our family as we experience God’s love and grace through song.  I am grateful that our family is a part of such a wonderful community of faith.     Hillary Whitaker

I had the good fortune to grow up in the 50’s and 60’s in a home with two wonderful parents who invested their time and love in my sister and me.  As an adult, I was again blessed with a wonderful family, my wife Barbara and our two children, Chandler and Hayden.  While I have been blessed with good friends and opportunities, for which I am truly grateful, the blessing of family is central to everything else in my life.  I am also blessed to be a member of an extended family, First Presbyterian, which helped educate our children with Christian values and like old friends, are dependable and there when needed. All of us in this great church are blessed as our problems pale in comparison to so many.    Wayne Abernathy

The dictionary defines blessed as divinely or supremely favored; fortunate. 
Every morning I wake up and feel blessed.  Blessed to be alive, to get to hug my family, to have a job and a house, and to have a community of friends and a community of faith.  A community of faith that welcomed and embraced my family, cared for us during the loss of grandparents, introduced me to wonderful friends, teaches our son to sing and worship God and provides me the opportunity to give back to our local community.  What a blessing!  Just look at the activity in our church.  We are actively worshipping, praying, ministering, celebrating and breaking bread together.  Each week we worship together with brothers and sisters from all walks of life.  What a blessing!  I'm so proud and fortunate that First Presbyterian Church understands the need to minister beyond our walls.  The opportunities abound!  Be it Allied Churches, Meals on Wheels, Furniture Ministry, Loaves & Fishes, Mission Trips and the list goes on and on.  What a blessing! 
 "In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" Acts 20:35  
It goes without saying that the biggest blessing in my life is my son.  There are days when I wonder what the future in this ever changing and crazy world holds for him.  What I do know is that he will be raised in a warm and loving Christian home and church.  Each of the blessings I mentioned above will guide and shape his growth and his faith.  He has a wonderful extended family that teaches him, guides him and most importantly loves him.  What a blessing! 
I feel blessed to be able to support and give back even if it's just a drop in the bucket compared to what we have received as a family.  As we enter our annual campaign, remember all of the ways that First Presbyterian has provided for you.  And remember it is He, from whom all blessings flow.       Tara Hackman