A Corporate Thanksgiving?

During last week's Thanksgiving holiday, people around the U.S. gathered together to eat turkey, watch football, and, presumably, to give thanks for the blessings they have received.

We share in this ritual of thanking God as individuals, as families, as friends. The first American settlers (with their American Indian friends) thanked God together as a community who had survived a hard voyage, harsh winter, cruel sicknesses, and new growing season.

Shouldn't our corporations offer thanks in a similar fashion, as a community that has received numerous blessings in good economies and in bad?

Below is my list of thanks-giving to God, on behalf of my organization:

Thank you for air to breathe.

Thank you for the capacity to learn, the capacity to think, the capacity to remember, the capacity to communicate, the capacity to grow things, the capacity to build things, and the capacity to work.

Thank you for the natural resources – earth, trees, water, sun, food, wind, stone, minerals, electricity – and the laws of physics which enable us to live and survive.

Thank you for beauty and strength and goodness and truth and trust.

Thank you for people. Thank you for relationships. Thank you for enabling us people to work together as a team, to learn from each other, to support one another, and to grow together.

Thank you for people who care – who care about their work, who care about the people around them, who care about their families, who care about customers, who care about being good stewards of the things they have been given, who care about making the world a better place.

Thank you for wisdom to make good decisions.

Thank you for leaders who care about their followers, who empower and strengthen their followers, and who lead by example.

Thank you for followers who follow responsibly, who work wholeheartedly, and who support their leaders and one another.

Thank you for families and for generations – for children, for youths, for young adults, for singles, for spouses, for parents, for grandparents, for elders, for those who have gone before us, and for those who are yet to come.

Thank you for ideas.

Thank you for the free market system, and the ability to trade, and the ability to connect to people in other locations and other nations, and the ability to compensate people for the work they do.

Thank you for nations that value and enable freedoms – among them, freedom to speak, freedom to practice religion, freedom to be educated, freedom to work and trade and be paid, freedom to start and run and own businesses, freedom to choose where to live, freedom to care for one’s family.

Thank you for governments that protect freedom and justice and truth and right-doing.

Thank you for the ability to create and the ability to make the world a better place.

Amen.