Thanksgiving

Originally posted November, 2006.

The month of Thanksgiving is upon us! Let us take some time today to reflect upon its meaning, beginning with this great passage of Scripture from Psalm 116 (NKJV):

For You have delivered my soul from death,
My eyes from tears,
And my feet from falling.
I will walk before the Lord
In the land of the living.
I believed, therefore I spoke,
“I am greatly afflicted.”
I said in my haste,
“All men are liars.”
What shall I render to the Lord
For all His benefits toward me?
I will take up the cup of salvation,
And call upon the name of the Lord.
I will pay my vows to the Lord
Now in the presence of all His people (NKJV, Ps. 116:8-14).

(From The Center for Vision & Values, Grove City College. Used by permission.)

By Dr. Paul Kengor

In 1789, America’s first president proclaimed a “day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” George Washington implored the heavens to “pardon our national and other transgressions” and urged the citizenry to practice “true religion and virtue.”

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln urged his countrymen to set aside the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

Subsequent presidents continued this civic-religious tradition. “More than three centuries ago, the Pilgrims, after a year of hardship and peril, humbly and reverently set aside a special day upon which to give thanks to God,” said John F. Kennedy in his first Thanksgiving proclamation. “They paused in their labors to give thanks for the blessings that had been bestowed upon them by Divine Providence.” Quoting the Bible, President Kennedy affirmed: “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord.”

[amazon 0830825746 thumbnail]

The First Thanksgiving by Robert Tracy McKenzie

Every year around Thanksgiving, I enjoy reflecting on the Pilgrims, their Mayflower voyage and that firstThanksgiving back in 1621. Being a descendant of no less a figure than John Alden (the one who stole Miles Standish’s girl, Priscilla Mullins) only encourages my Thanksgiving reverie. This year, I enjoyed finishing a first-rate historical survey of that special Pilgrim holiday. The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History by Robert Tracy McKenzie (IVP, 2013), is a book I thoroughly enjoyed but one that challenged me to reexamine the historical record and the reasons why I love to reflect on my Puritanical roots.

McKenzie takes the occasion of writing a book on the first thanksgiving, to remind his Christian audience about the role history should play in our faith. He covers the nuts and bolts of historical research while he’s at it. Now, he does tip some sacred cows. He points out how we have scant records of the actual first thanksgiving, and demurs that it wasn’t the first thanksgiving in any true sense—at least four other public occasions of thanksgiving in America (the French Huguenots on Florida’s shores in 1565 being the earliest) have greater claim to that honor. Intriguingly “Plymouth Rock” was born from second-hand recollections of an original Pilgrim some 100 years or more after their landing. And more importantly, American history didn’t instill the Pilgrims’ autumnal feast with national importance for several hundred years. It was left for Franklin D. Roosevelt to be the first American President to directly connect the national observance of Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims of Plymouth and their historic feast.

Where can we begin as we thank God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit for telling us what we need to know about the true identity of the Triune God and what each Person of the Godhead has done and will do in the created universe?

First, the Father, through Christ the Son, as revealed by the Spirit in the Bible, created millions of wonderful spirit-beings called angels. The Lord asked Job:

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (NKJV, Job 38:4, 7; Job 1:6 informs us that “the sons of God” were angels).

How many angels did God create? Approximately 600 million—because one-third of all angels, led by Satan, rebelled against their Creator (Rev. 12:4), and their number was 200 million (Rev. 9:16). That is a large number—but praise God, twice that many remained faithful to Him, in contrast to mankind, where:

All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way. (Isa. 53:6)

Now, this is the focus of our Thanksgiving meditation this year: We, being limited human beings, need the help of God’s holy angels. “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation?” (Heb. 1:14).

’Tis by Thy Strength the Mountains Stand
Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

’Tis by Thy strength the mountains stand,
God of eternal power;
The sea grows calm at Thy command,
And tempests cease to roar.

Thy morning light and evening shade
Successive comforts bring;
Thy plenteous fruits make harvest glad,
Thy flowers adorn the spring.