Thanksgiving Preparations

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving! I am so excited about the holiday this year. Most of my family (mom, dad, Tawna, Krista, Bryce, Jessica, Laura, Brian, Davin, Kea, Blake and Grandma) are headed to our house today and will stay with us for the Thanksgiving weekend. We have been working hard to get ready for them. I've had my lists of shopping and cleaning and to do's going and I've been checking them off until finally I think I'm ready. Scott and I went big time shopping last night and filled a second fridge! Luckily, our neighbors got a new one on Saturday so we asked to put their old one in our garage for the week. Smart thinkin Scott!

All the preparations are almost done and now I am thinking about being thankful. I am so grateful that we are able to have my family in our home this weekend. I am so thankful for the little family I share this home with every day. I hope as we celebrate tomorrow I can truly remember to be thankful and more importantly, to be thankful to God for it all. As I think about the holiday, I wanted to share something that really helped prepare me and remind me of what this special day is all about. I hope you enjoy it and I hope your Thanksgiving day is wonderful and is full of family, food, friends and gratitude to God.

In 1620 when the Pilgrims landed in what is now Plymouth MA, they had a difficult time and the first winter was cruel. Many died. But the next year, 1621, they had a plentiful harvest. So Governor Bradford declared a three-day feast. The Pilgrims invited Indian friends to join them, and Thanksgiving was born.

What's interesting to note and sadly, too frequently overlooked is that they didn't get together to celebrate their harvest -- they got together to thank God for their harvest. They, who were at His mercy, recognized how He had blessed them. Do we?

Some 168 years later, during his first year in office, President George Washington issued a Thanksgiving proclamation. He did so because both Houses of Congress requested that he "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 and signal favors of Almighty God."

Can you imagine a similar request coming from any single member of Congress today, let alone both houses of Congress?

In the same address Washington also wrote: "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." His entire address (though lengthy) is powerful and beautiful.

About 75 years after that, during the very heart of the Civil War, in October 1863, President Lincoln created our official annual day of Thanksgiving. Interestingly, the challenges facing our nation and its people then were strikingly similar to those we face now.I think President Lincoln's observations about how to resolve those challenges would be as beneficial to us now as they were to his countrymen.Like Washington before him, he was determined to draw a direct tie between America and the Creator from whom America draws her rights.

His proclamation establishing a national day of Thanksgiving: "The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversion of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. 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 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 deliverance's 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." --Abraham Lincoln