This year there were two events that marked the Thanksgiving Holiday:
1) Thanksgiving eve service
Having never gone to a Thanksgiving eve service I wasn’t sure what to expect… I wasn’t sure if there was going to be a turkey pageant or if the candle light service was going to include marshmallows!
As it turned out, the service at my in-laws church was beautiful. We stood around the sanctuary in the dark holding un-lite candles (well, electric candles with the switches turned off). One by one we voiced our thanks into a traveling microphone and turned on our candles. Seeing the lights come on one by one sure was special…
One of the interesting things about the evening was the thanks voiced by everyone. The majority of the participants said that they were thankful for their family – their spouse, their children, their parents, their sisters and brothers, etc….
2) Seeing the “Courageous” movie Friday evening
The second event was a movie night Friday evening. A few of us went to Emmett to watch the “Courageous” movie. The theme of this film is fatherhood – moving from being an ‘ok’ or ‘good enough father’ to being a father that calls out their children to be women and men of God – to be people who hear the voice of God and choose to follow Him.
It was film calling our society to task for teaching us that it is ok for a father to ignore their family in lieu of a good career or to pass off the job of raising the kids to their wives – or, as the case may be, to simply mail child support checks each month without really caring what was happing with the children…
These two events….two sides of a coin – one side shows how much we really do care about our families while the other side reflects the reality that we don’t really live it.
One is talk while the other is action.
Which one means more? Which one reflects the ‘truth’ in our hearts?
Reflecting, Reconnecting, and Renewal
Thanksgiving….
A time of celebration and for family. A time to pause – to stop our busy lives and thank the Lord for all that He has done.
A time to reflect on how our lives are going – a time to readjust accordingly.
It is a good thing that Thanksgiving is the first of our three major Fall/Winter holidays.
- Thanksgiving – giving thanks for the harvest and for God’s provisions; time of pondering and Reflections
- Christmas – the coming of the King of Kings into our world; a time to Reconnect with both God and humanity
- New Years – a chance to start afresh; Renewal
Feast of Ingathering
From time immoral humanity has paused in the fall months to give thanks for the harvest – to praise their gods for keeping them safe another year and for providing food, drink and family.
When the Lord called the Hebrew people out of Egypt and created a nation for them, He set a feast of thanksgiving in place for them. The Feast of Ingathering or Booths was to be a seven day festival in which the people were to live outside in temporary shelters. These ‘booths’, as they were called, were to remind everyone that:
“… I (God) had the Israelites live in temporary shelters when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.’” –Leviticus 23:43
It was a time to stop and reflect on what God had done. To give glory to the Lord for delivering them – delivering their forefathers from slavery – from harm – to give glory to the Lord for providing food, shelter, drink, freedom and family.
The Plymouth Settlement
Here in the USA we also remember the Lord’s provision for us as a nation. While there were other Europeans settlements in America at the time when the Puritan Pilgrims sailed from Amsterdam, Netherlands (where they had lived for ten years after leaving England), to the northeastern coast of Massachusetts. These Pilgrims saw themselves, as you will soon hear, as the typology of Israel living out the Exodus story in their own time and place.
Five days after the Pilgrims landed at Cape Code on November 06, 1620, William Bradford – one of their leaders – penned these words:
“Having found a good haven and being brought safely in sight of land, they [the pilgrims] fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries of it, again to set their feet upon the firm and stable earth, their proper element….
“But here I cannot but make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poor people’s present condition; and so I think will the reader, too, when he considers it well. Having thus passed the vast ocean, and that sea of troubles before while they were making their preparations, they now had no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain and refresh their weather beaten bodies, nor house – much less towns – to repair to.”
How many of us have passed a ‘vast ocean’ and a ‘sea of troubles’ this year? How many of us as sitting here not quite knowing where their friends are – or if they have any friends ….how quite sure about their family? Perhaps we stand on the ground today after a year of being tossed and turned upon the ocean of life. We are standing – but just barely.
Let us keep reading:
“What, then, could now sustain them but the spirit of God, and His grace? Ought the children of their fathers rightly to say: Our fathers were Englishmen who came over the great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice, and looked on their adversity…Let them therefore praise the Lord, because He is good, and His mercies endure forever. Yea, let them that have been redeemed of the Lord, show how He hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered forth into the desert-wilderness, out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed in them. Let them confess before the Lord His loving kindness, and His wonderful works before the sons of men!”
Thanksgiving – a time to stop and reflect on what God had done. Bradford was giving glory to God for bring them safely over the oceans – through the desert wilderness, as he put it – and into a new land to create a new nation.
As mentioned before, Bradford and the Pilgrims saw themselves as the new Israel settling the new land of Canaan. In penning the words we just read, William Bradford laying down the foundation to what will one day be the USA national holiday Thanksgiving.
A time of reflecting on what God has done – a time to give glory to the Lord for providing food, shelter, drink, freedom and family.
Walking It Out
I pray that you took time this holiday to reflect on what Jesus has done in your lives. To remember the times before you knew Him – to remember the trials and the struggles through which He has brought you through.
I pray that you will remember and that you will walk out your thanksgiving.
To remember and to reflect on what God has done – to give thanks for one’s family, jobs, land, house, food, drink, freedom – and then to live for yourself – selfishly pursing money, prestige, honor, bigger-and-better toys is to miss the point. It is to miss the purpose of Thanksgiving
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. ” -James 1:22-35