Grateful to God

 

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for a day of national thanksgiving. After recalling many of the desperate times of the Civil War and the tragic and violent warfare, he addressed the many ways in which the basic needs and necessities of the nation had remained intact, how the harvesting had produced food and, in spite of the war, so many blessings of “normal” life had continued. Then he proclaimed the following:

“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 has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.”

Thanksgiving, in our time, raises for us a challenge to look away from the many enhancements to much of our living. Never before has the mind of human beings been more able to describe and research and analyze the dynamics of humankind’s existence than the age in which we live. Never before has knowledge of the physical world been so available to so vast a portion of the human race. Never before has humankind been able to communicate and to travel and to exploit the resources of this planet as is possible in our time. How understandable it might be that we would begin to consider ourselves somehow superior to other populations of the planet who occupied the planet in “primitive” times.

We need to realize how fragile are human achievements, how subject to human passions and how dependent on natural forces far beyond our control. We live by the grace of God whether the year is 1863 or 2012.

President Lincoln’s proclamation sounds remarkably appropriate for our moment of history. It is easy to be so overwhelmed by the issues of our times that we lose our capacity to realize that God the Almighty has declared that his love for us is everlasting and his grace powerful enough to redeem the worst of us.

One man has said that for us. Thanksgiving ought to be more than a big meal and a football game. Hopefully, it will be a time of serious reflection on our many blessings, and a sincere outpouring of gratitude to our generous and loving heavenly Father.

Go with God,

Pastor Jansen