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Giving Thanks TO God


The First Thanksgiving 1621 By Jean Leon Gerome Ferris
(Originally written for The Baldwin Bulletin: Pastor's Column November 29, 2019)

I'm not quite sure where this year has gone. For hunters, deer season is here. I'm personally waiting for the ice to be thick enough to do some fishing. Christmas decorations have started to go up around the area. Perhaps some of you have been mapping out the best Black Friday shopping sales. It doesn't feel like my daughter (a preschooler) and my wife (a teacher) started school all that long ago, but now I hear them talking about the Pilgrims and Native Americans. Their classes have each had projects (similar to what I remember doing growing up) that help remember and display certain parts of life around the "First Thanksgiving."

Much has been written in recent years about difficulties, conflicts, and tragedies that came with the colonists’ entry into what we now call the United States of America. Through the spread of sickness and violence, life and relationships between the different groups was far from perfect. Yet in 1621 the English colonists and the Wampanoag people met together at the Plymouth Plantation to give thanks for the harvest. Their Thanksgiving Day involved feasting on food that they had raised, harvested, caught, or shot and they spent time together. At least for the Pilgrims, thanks wasn’t just an attitude of happiness towards good fortune or luck, but they were thankful to God Almighty for his faithful provisions.

Psalm 67 offers this prayer: May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among the nations. May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you…Then the land will yield its harvest, and God, our God, will bless us. God will bless us, and all the ends of the earth will fear him.

In the week ahead, hopefully all of us have time and opportunity to gather with family or friends to enjoy good food and each other’s company and laughter. Maybe we’ll spend Thursday afternoon watching football, paging through newspaper ads, napping, or swapping stories. Hopefully we’re able to enjoy a time of rest amid life’s busyness, though I’m sure some farmers may still be bringing in the harvest.

But let us not forget that Thanksgiving is a day to practice what should be practiced daily—thanksgiving to God. We give him thanks because he has blessed us immensely and in ways we don’t deserve. He has provided our food, he has provided our shelter, he has provided our redemption by sending his Son Jesus. By intentionally acknowledging his blessing, our hope joins the psalmist that God’s ways would be known on earth and his salvation believed among the nations.



Happy Thanksgiving and thank you farmers and all involved in the ag industry—from agronomists and seed vendors to mechanics and co-op workers—for all your hard work! 
(I'd put a picture of a tractor here but someone would get offended for it not being the right color or make, so here's a turkey.)

Photo by Suzy Brooks on Unsplash

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