My first years in school were in a private, Christian school. My mother thought I was big for my age and with my December birthday enrolled me in first grade at five years of age, which the public school would not allow. She obviously wasn’t factoring in athletics at the time, which fortunately didn’t turn out to be a big deal when the family moved to small town Alabama. But one of the benefits of the Christian school was their emphasis on Scripture memorization and how it gave me a love for learning signal Bible passages “by heart.”

One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving worship is the opportunity the season affords us to sing songs we don’t sing any other time of the year. Not that we shouldn’t give consideration to saying our thanks through song throughout the year, it’s just that certain hymns seem to sound better when we sing them closer to the Thanksgiving holiday.

If you look on your calendars, you’ll see that Thanksgiving Day doesn’t happen for another couple of weeks. But sandwiched in between the holidays of Halloween and Thanksgiving is another holiday that should elicit our gratitude but too often falls through the cracks because of the busyness of the season. I’m referring, of course, to Veterans Day, which this year falls on Sunday.