A Thanksgiving Reflection

This year I found myself thinking about a man I never met. A Quaker with a plain name and an uncommon kind of courage. His name was John Borton. He wa

s alive a few centuries before anyone in my family learned to work a microwave or argue about football scores or gather around a dining table with too much food and almost not enough elbow room. Yet somehow I feel close to him now.

He stood on the shore of old England long ago with a faith so honest and straightforward that it made powerful people nervous, for no other reason than that he believed Jesus actually meant what he said. He refused oaths because he believed truth should be spoken without decoration. He generally refused war because he believed peace was not an idea but a command. He refused the clergy because he believed Christ was already in the room. When he prayed, he waited for Christ the way some people wait for sunrise. Quiet. Expectant. Steady.

He had a faith that couldn't stay hidden for long, and that faith did not keep him out of trouble. So he gathered his wife and children, carried his convictions to a creaking ship, and crossed the gray Atlantic to a land that held more mysteries than people back then. When he reached land, he stepped onto the soil of southern New Jersey with nothing guaranteed except the hope that he could worship Christ honestly in the open air and not get arrested for it. And once he put his feet down in that place, my family stayed. They wound up living in that corner of the world for three hundred years. Some are still there today. Apparently, I am among the first ever to leave.

For years, I carried the sense that I was the strange one in the family, the one whose faith sat at a different angle than everyone else’s. I had never really seen anyone else who was wired the way I am. Not until now. John Borton's love for Christ refused to bend, not even when the cost grew heavy, and the world weighed hard on his heart. He stood in old England with a conviction that made his world uncomfortable. And because of that, he stepped onto a new continent long before it was called America.

The more I learn about him and his Quaker ways of living and believing, the more I recognize something familiar. Like in the way he would listen for Christ in the quiet. The ways of choosing truth, even when it sets you apart. The ways he stepped forward, not because the future is certain, but because obedience matters more than comfort. And without realizing it, I have spent years doing the same in my own small ways.

So when I look back at my family now, I can finally see the first echo of something that has lived in me all along. The stubborn sincerity. The courage to step out.The refusal to settle for a version of faith that sits politely in the corner. I used to think I was the odd one. Now I see I was simply picking up a thread that began three centuries ago in the life of a man who followed Christ with a full heart.

And somehow it found its way to me.

And as I look around at the people I love, the ones who were at my table and the ones scattered across states and seasons, I feel a simple kind of gratitude that remembers how faithful God has been, long before I ever arrived on this earth.

So here is my Thanksgiving prayer. May I carry forward the best of what he carried. May I honor the faith that brought my family to this land. And may Christ who guided him guide me too, with a light that never stops shining.

Buckets of blessings, one and all.