ShareThisOn a day like Thanksgiving, we celebrate life with our families and loved ones and remember to thank the Almighty Father from whom all of our blessings have come. We pause from our daily grind and make time to be with people we care about most. We travel hundreds or thousands of miles to savor the nostalgic moments of catching up on one another over a traditional feast of roast turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweetened yam and ham.
Next, we look around and spread cheers by making our thanksgiving thoughts known to people to whom we owe some big or small favors or share our blessings to others who have not been quite as fortunate, especially during these past few years of economic recession.
Truly, no one but those who walk in the same shoes could feel the pain of people who had lost their jobs, foreclosed on their homes, maxed out on their credit cards to temporarily bridge their economic predicament, missed their meals and saw their last ounce of self esteem and hope, evaporate in thin air. For them, giving thanks might not come easy.
For others, however, it is this crucial time of their lives when their faith in God deepens. It draws them closer to the Lord to whom they turn for relief and deliverance. President Abraham Lincoln, whose “original 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation came at a pivotal point in his life,” when 60,000 American lives perished in the Battle of Gettysburg, found Christ as he walked in the midst of thousands of graves at Gettysburg. President Lincoln’s message in his Thanksgiving Proclamation below still rings very true today.
Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. 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. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.
Today, with two wars our country is fighting and tens of thousands of our young soldiers in harm’s way every day, those of us who live far away from the danger zones, eat and sleep in the comforts of our home and never have to go through special holidays alone must thank God for our blessings and honor Him by reaching out to His other children in His mighty name.