Happy Thanksgiving
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus, the Son of God and the one who came to save the world.
We’re enjoying this week of thankfulness, as Americans celebrate our national Day of Thanksgiving. When the holiday was established by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg had just been fought, with 50,000 American casualties from that one engagement. The trauma of those losses was so painful that the President issued a proclamation that we should all pause for a time of gratitude, even in times of crisis and tragedy. Here’s what Lincoln said:
“I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, …to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving... And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him …, 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 Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”
Being grateful includes penitence—it’s right there in the original proclamation. That reference to our “national perverseness and disobedience” rings true for us, right? We pause this week with the same issues before us that caused us pain the week before…and the week before that, and so on. We pause to be grateful even as we struggle to find that “more perfect Union” we’ve been reading about since we were kids. Learning to express true gratitude invites us to repent and try to be better people—better friends, better moms and dads, better neighbors, and better Christians.
Thanksgiving is one of our inclusive celebrations. It’s not really a religious holiday—it’s not Christian, so our Jewish friends and Muslim friends and Hindu friends and Buddhist friends (you get the idea) can all join together in gratitude for the many blessings in our lives. I think that’s why so many Americans consider this our favorite civic holiday.
But for people of our Christian faith, Thanksgiving is an opportunity to be thankful for the life and ministry of Jesus, and all that it means to us. We’ve just ended the Christian Year with the Feast of Christ the King, and this Sunday we begin again with Advent. We are, on this day, right in that space between the close of one season and the beginning of another. I think that having Thanksgiving Day this week gives us an opportunity to be thankful for the love and grace that Jesus lived and continues to give to us, and also to remember that our faith invites us to hope for his coming again.
So I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving this week. I hope that you get a chance to see or speak to the special people in your life, and that the holiday gives you a chance to find some reconciliation if you need it. Lincoln was onto something when he invited us to repent a little, so we could be grateful a lot!
May that be your experience this year. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Blessings in Christ,
Pastor John