The Necessity of Thanksgiving
Even when the world is collapsing, evil threatens us, we sing praise and thanks to God
Your gratitude determines your attitude. And we have much to be thankful for!
Being thankful is one of the most important character attributes to cultivate in this life. It informs your conversations with others and colors your prospects for success. Cheerful and joyful Christians can conquer the enemies around us as we sing to the God who made us and will never leave us or forsake us. That is something to be thankful for. "Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you" (Deuteronomy 31:6). "He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you'" (Hebrews 13:5). "The righteous are victorious, as God will never leave them or forsake them" (Psalm 37:5).
All blessings are God-given. Thus, we are a grateful people, destined to win, confident in the future, and appreciative of the past directed by the Lord. America is a land flowing with milk and honey. This promised land is not a replacement for ancient Israel, but it is a blessing to the people of God. Christians have lived and raised families in this land for hundreds of years. We have fought and died for peace that allows prosperity. But we have turned our backs on the God who blessed us and invited his judgment upon us.
Yet the Church remains. We who call ourselves children of the Most High God must continually celebrate His blessing. “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His loving devotion endures forever. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy and gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south” Psalm 107 1-3). We can be thankful for food and family when we feast on the freedom of victory.
When people say “I am thankful…” I ask to whom are you thankful? Are you thankful to chance or the universe (both are impersonal, inept, and effete)? Or, do you give thanks to God, the personal creator and savior of the world? We thank people for good things. We are grateful to our parents, coaches, and teachers for what they do. We must thank God alone for his providential goodness in our lives.
This week we celebrated a uniquely American holiday specifically for giving thanks to God.
Pilgrims yearned for freedom and their strong faith and trust in God led them here. In March 1621, when Plymouth's survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag Sachem Massasoit (1580-1661), a local Native American chief, met with Plymouth's governor and author of the Mayflower Compact, John Carver (1576-1621). They declared a friendship and a commitment to mutual defense from other tribes. The English gathered their first successful harvest averting starvation and invited Massasoit and 90 of his men to join the Pilgrims for the “First Thanksgiving.”1 This story has been retold and distorted. However, Sarah Joseph Hale (1788-1879), an editor and author of magazines and books such as Northwood (1827), is the godmother of Thanksgiving providing the most robust and complete picture of the religious tenor of this national holiday.2
Our country’s history is peppered with Thanksgiving. Let us catalog the many blessings God has given us and that we have acknowledged before him, to his glory and honor. George Washington issued the first official United States of America proclamation of Thanksgiving on October 3, 1789 - after this nation was born through wars and dissension.
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor—and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation—for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war—for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed—for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted—for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually—to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed—to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord—To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
According to Washington, God gave us this nation. He won the battles for us and allowed us to resolve our differences with a federal Constitution. God gave us unity through a common faith in his son Jesus Christ. Our use of reason to establish principles that adhere to His truth increased our prosperity. He inspired us to teach and learn more about him and his world. We confess our sins before him as the proper posture before the creator of the universe, making supplication for his continued blessing. He has given us a will to use well and the conscience for virtue that seeks Him and righteousness. Our prosperity is a result of this blessing.
“Today I am giving you a choice. You may choose the blessing or the curse. You will get the blessing if you listen and obey the commands of the Lord your God that I have told you today. But you will get the curse if you refuse to listen and obey the commands of the Lord your God. So don’t stop living the way I command you today, and don’t follow other gods that you don’t know” (Deuteronomy 11:26-28).
We once chose to listen to God. Even in the midst of a riven nation during the Civil War, we turned to God. Abraham Lincoln thanked God on October 20, 1864:
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 by immigration, while He has opened to us new sources of wealth and has crowned the labor of our workingmen 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 I 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 further 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 blessings 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.
Lincoln called upon God within this prayer of Thanksgiving to deliver victory and restore this nation. He acknowledged that God is the source of our own individual skill and success. His heartfelt request to God alone was for the future prospects of our nation and families. And, this prayer was answered. From Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt on October 31, 1908, these prayers continued:
Once again the season is at hand when, according to the ancient custom of our people, it becomes the duty of the President to appoint a day of prayer and of thanksgiving to God.
Year by year this Nation grows in strength and worldly power. During the century and a quarter that has elapsed since our entry into the circle of independent peoples we have grown and prospered in material things to a degree never known before, and not now known in any other country. The thirteen colonies which straggled along the seacoast of the Atlantic and were hemmed-in but a few miles west of tidewater by the Indian haunted wilderness, have been transformed into the mightiest republic which the world has ever seen. Its domains stretch across the continent from one to the other of the two greatest oceans, and it exercises dominion alike in the arctic and tropic realms. The growth in wealth and population has surpassed even the growth in territory. Nowhere else in the world is the average of individual comfort and material well-being as high as in our fortunate land.
For the very reason that in material well-being we have thus abounded, we owe it to the Almighty to show equal progress in moral and spiritual things. With a nation, as with the individuals who make up a nation, material well-being is an indispensable foundation. But the foundation avails nothing by itself. That life is wasted, and worse than wasted, which is spent in piling, heap upon heap, those things which minister merely to the pleasure of the body and to the power that rests only on wealth. Upon material well-being as a foundation must be raised the structure of the lofty life of the spirit if this Nation is properly to fulfill its great mission and to accomplish all that we so ardently hope and desire. The things of the body are good; the things of the intellect better; the best of all are the things of the soul; for, in the nation as in the individual, in the long run, it is character that counts. Let us, therefore, as a people set our faces resolutely against evil, and with broad charity, with kindliness and good-will toward all men, but with unflinching determination to smite down wrong, strive with all the strength that is given us for righteousness in public and in private life.
Now, Therefore, I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, do set apart Thursday, the 26th day of November, next, as a day of general thanksgiving and prayer, and on that day I recommend that the people shall cease from their daily work, and, in their homes or in their churches, meet devoutly to thank the Almighty for the many and great blessings they have received in the past, and to pray that they may be given the strength so to order their lives as to deserve a continuation of these blessings in the future.
This harkens back to the Pilgrim’s Thanksgiving. Where starvation and death were once visited upon these Protestants a land busting with opportunity gave way to growth, production, and wealth. By the grace of God and in the service of his kingdom our strength was multiplied. But, Teddy admonished the people of this nation that riches avail nothing if this treasure is not used for God’s glory. Our spiritual and religious character is worth more than all the money and power in the world.
Christian churches and families form pockets of appreciation and thanksgiving. I fear that, for the most part, we have lost this attitude of gratitude toward God in this nation. We no longer “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). And instead, our sin requires God’s just punishment. Even then, his praise will ever be on our lips. “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our "God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:28).
Silverman, D. J. (2019). This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Kirkpatrick, M. (2016). Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience. United Kingdom: Encounter Books.