I enjoy that kind of work a lot. Touching things with my hands, physical labor. It's a nice change of pace for me. I work with my head, with people, with ideas, and with computers.

We were a human assembly-line and I thought of people who do that kind of work for a living. Maybe you do. We were able to talk, and were outside on two beautiful, sunny, breezy days. And it was only for 3 hours. I wondered what it would be like 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

Abruptly it was over. “No more,” they yelled, and we passed it on down line. As we workers scattered, I gazed over sunny scene. The pumpkins, which had grown on ground were back there, only clean, and arranged orderly by size this time. Ashes to ashes, I thought, to same place returneth, but then scene became dynamic. The pumpkins had a lot in store for them. Already some were being used as backdrops for family photographs, while others were being carted off to become a jack-o-lantern, lawn pumpkin, or pumpkin pie.

My job, now completed, was part of a much larger scenario, yet from it I had harvested much. At Thanksgiving time, a time of harvest and bounty, I invite you to reflect on your work and your life -- mission and meaning side of it. The planting of seed part of it. The reaping what you have sown part of it. Have you? Will you?