on thanksgiving & Thanksgiving…
Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving… (Col. 4.2)
Thanksgiving, the discipline, not the holiday, is a spiritual rhythm in a healthy person because it alerts us to the hand of God in our midst. A person who pursues the discipline of thanksgiving sees life– our loves, friendships, accomplishments, joys, the blessings that embrace those around us, etc.– as a gift from God. Thanksgiving protects us from conceit, self-sufficiency, cynicism, and blind consumerism. It frees us from vain comparisons and competitions, which only serve to tire our spirit as we pursue elusive goals that cannot bring lasting fulfillment. Thanksgiving humbles us, whereas the ungrateful heart, steeped in pride, will drift towards bitterness, selfishness, duplicity, fear, sin, and doubt because it is unable to rejoice in the bounty of God’s goodness manifest towards others. Ingratitude shrivels our capacity to give thanks because it is ultimately narcissistic — unless it blesses me, enriches me, or raises me up, it doesn’t really count. The ungrateful heart can only begrudgingly concede that good things are happening to those around them — but the fact that it is happening to others and not to them is one more evidence that life is unfair.
This Thanksgiving holiday, will you take the initiative to encourage the discipline of thanksgiving in yourself and others by pausing to give the Lord thanks for the significant blessings in your life... whatever table you gather around, why not ask friends and/or family members to share what they are grateful for and either pray together or close the time with a simple prayer.
Finally, I thought you might be interested in reading the proclamation establishing our Thanksgiving observances here in the United States. It is our only original national holiday whose focus is the Lord. It is a simple illustration that our recognition of God’s goodness is independent of our circumstances. Thanksgiving can (must?) arise even amidst the most turbulent and distressing times. Lincoln made his Thanksgiving Day proclamation during the final year of the American Civil War. By that time, at least 465,000 were dead on both sides. As a percentage of our nation’s population, that would be the equivalent of 5.25 million deaths today. Can you imagine?! It is amidst this devastation that Lincoln issued his Thanksgiving Day proclamation:
Proclamation of Thanksgiving
October 20, 1864, by the President of the United States of America
It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with his guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps and our sailors on the rivers and seas with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and immigration, while He has opened to us new sources of wealth and has crowned the labor of our working men in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of Freedom and Humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions.
Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do, hereby, appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day, which IA desire to be observed by all my fellow citizens wherever they may then be as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to Almighty God the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do farther recommend to my fellow citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessing of Peace, Union, and Harmony throughout the land, which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington this twentieth day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, and, of the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth… Abraham Lincoln
Happy Thanksgiving!
