Counting our blessing as citizens of the USA

Thanksgiving is that uniquely American holiday that offers us a chance to pause and reflect on the abundant blessings and opportunities in our lives.

It's a holiday abounding with food and relatives, naps and football and, if you're lucky, leftovers.

But above all, it gives each of us a chance to appreciate and give thanks for both the small and large blessings that make life worth living.

Our Sunday sermon was just such an example. Our minister provided his top 10 list of reasons to be thankful and shared with the congregation his perspective on the abundant gifts that sometimes we simply take for granted.

Along that same theme, ABC News - of all places - surveyed Americans this past week to get their take on reasons to be thankful.

Now by virtually any measure, ABC News does not have a reputation as a conservative news outlet and, quite frankly, when I read their Thanksgiving list I expected some fairly progressive survey answers.

To put it bluntly, boy was I wrong.

Survey respondents were asked to give one word answers to the question of what they were most thankful for and the top response was "family" followed by "life" and health."

I'm going to make a wild assumption and say that most readers of this column would give virtually the very same answers if asked.

But these answers were simple and, to me, obvious.

Yet down that top 10 list just a little were some responses that were both surprising and encouraging.

Among the top responses were "friends" "Trump" and "Jesus".

I can only imagine liberals' heads were spinning when they saw those last two responses.

Not really sure how ABC selected their random sample for this survey but I can only assume it was a wildly different sample group from their election polling which never would have included Trump in any kind of positive light.

This survey, like most surveys, is a highly suspect way to gauge public opinion regardless of the topic.

But it does illustrate that despite major differences on so many issues, Americans also share in many underlying foundational beliefs.

Were each of us to fashion just such a list, I strongly suspect "family," "friends" and "health" would easily come to mind.

Those values alone cut across all lines of division regardless of age, race, gender or politics.

When we gather this week and quietly reflect on our blessings, it's encouraging to know that despite our massive differences, most of our core values are similar.