PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

November 28, 2021

THANKSGIVING 2021

Last year my Thanksgiving article (see musingsfromtheheartland.com for 11/29/20) focused on the pandemic.  Family gatherings were canceled and people were not allowed to visit their friends and loved ones in hospitals and nursing facilities.  Funerals were postponed and many times persons could not be with their loved ones when they died.

This year the coronavirus is still with us. Some expect a spike in the days ahead.  Vaccines have made it possible for the country to reopen and allow families to gather once again this year to celebrate Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately, some of those who will be flying might well find their flights canceled.  The cost to travel by car will be greater as a result of increased gas prices.  The Thanksgiving meal will be the most expensive in our country’s history reflecting the growing inflation rate.   The meal will be 14% higher than last year. A labor shortage will cause a variety of problems.  Thanksgiving 2021 will take place against the backdrop of a nation divided in a variety of ways.

In the fall of 1863 our nation found itself in the grips of a Civil War.  Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation in those troubled times still resonates today as we face our variety of problems and difficulties.  In part Lincoln wrote:

I … 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 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 deliverances 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 suffers 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.

Lincoln suggests the reason to give thanks and praise derives from God’s providence and mercy.  Thanksgiving is time to remember all of God’s blessings, love, care and mercy.  Almost sixty years after Lincoln’s proclamation Helen H. Lemmel wrote, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”  During the difficult days of the Civil War President Lincoln turned his eyes upon the Almighty.

Lincoln also suggests that Thanksgiving 1863 was a time to remember all those who have suffered as a result of the Civil War.  The Civil War had catastrophic deaths, great destruction, especially where the battles were fought, divided families and caused great hardship on many.  In the Parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus reminds us that our neighbor is any who is suffering and in distress.

Lastly, the President prays for the healing of the nation so that all might have full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union.  Lincoln was committed to a restoration of the nation and pursued it with his words and actions.  Often he was a lone voice crying in the wilderness.

During these difficult time we could do well to follow President Lincoln’s suggestions and turn our eyes on Jesus, remember those who are suffering and in distress, and, with God’s help, work to bring about peace and reconciliation.