Anyone hungry yet? If not, it’s time to run a few extra laps
around the block to work up that appetite because it’s almost Thanksgiving. The
big meal has been a tradition on this soil for nearly 400 years. The Pilgrims
and the Native Americans started it back in 1621 and we have been giving thanks
and eating ever since. Those early settlers thanked God for rain and celebrated
the harvest. The blessings we claim around the table today probably have very
little to do with the growth of corn and beans. We still have very meaningful
things to thank God for in 2014, they’re just different.
It was another 240 years after that first Thanksgiving before
it was officially declared an American holiday. I suppose that means that in
the early years, not everyone celebrated it on the same day. There wasn’t a
designated day off. They were thankful whenever their crops came in, they ate a
big meal, and they went back to work.
It didn’t become an official American holiday until 1863
when President Abraham Lincoln made that declaration. You know what else was happening
in 1863? The American Civil War. The images that come to mind at the mention of
the Civil War era are, well, of war. The loud bang of muskets being fired. The
bloody sight of makeshift hospitals and wounds dressed with improvised bandages.
The sour sense of disease and dysentery. Horseback riding soldiers wearing long
uniform coats threadbare and festooned with rows of brass buttons, often with holes
from where some the tarnished buttons had long gone missing. The smell of entire
towns burning.
It’s not exactly the atmosphere we find ourselves in on
Thanksgiving today. We have the aroma of basted turkey to tease us and the
taste of macaroni and cheese to comfort us. We laugh and clap at jumbo sized
helium-filled balloon characters floating by Central Park followed by the Radio
City Rockettes kick line at Herald Square. And football. We can’t forget all the
football. We have a lot to be thankful for.
What do you think Lincoln was thinking when in the midst of
war he declared a national holiday for the purpose of being thankful? For what
exactly was he thankful? What do you think he wanted to encourage the nation that
was at war with itself to be thankful for? I can understand the need for a holiday
in the middle of a war. A holiday could be a tactic to rally the troops and
bolster support on the home front. But a thanksgiving one?
Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation reads, “No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any
mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the
Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless
remembered mercy…” It closes with, “…fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the
wounds of the nation, and to restore it…”
It seems to me that Lincoln was thankful that there would be
survivors of people and land, and thankful that God deals not only in judgment,
but also in mercy with regard to war. His words also seem to bear confidence
and thankfulness in the power of the Almighty God to make it right in the end.
Could Lincoln have been thankful that God didn’t stop the war from ever
happening in the first place and allowed it to go on for a greater purpose,
acknowledging God’s ultimate power and control?
I don’t suppose we can know the answer to that this side of
heaven, but here’s what I do know. If we measure our blessings from God based
only on the good things we do and the things we get right, then we miss the
whole point of Jesus’ life and death on the cross. All of us are still going to
mess up, get it wrong, start wars with neighbors, support the wrong cause, hurt
other people, and maybe even leave a few things smoldering in our wake. Jesus accepted
God’s anger and judgment for what we do wrong and it killed him. God’s greater
purpose and ultimate power brought Jesus back to life, and in mercy gives us
the blessings for what Jesus did right. The Almighty God will make it right if
we let Him. “God demonstrates his own love for us in this:
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). That’s more than
a plateful to be thankful for and it’s what I’ll be feasting on this
Thanksgiving. Care to join me?
This was originally posted November 27, 2014 on The Press and Standard's website:
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