A Reason to Give Thanks

As I prepared to teach a Sunday school lesson on the topic of giving thanks, I came across a fact from American history that I had not known. While we credit the Pilgrims and their Native American counterparts for the first Thanksgiving feast, and although George Washington declared America's first national day of thanksgiving and prayer, Thanksgiving Day was not established as a national holiday until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation "invit[ing] my fellow citizens in every part of the United States ... to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens[.]"

If I had to guess the year in which Thanksgiving became an annual holiday in the United States, I wouldn't have guessed 1863 -- the height of the Civil War. It was a time when our nation's grief and pain may have been at their worst.  With brother fighting brother, the war left an estimated 620,000 men dead -- roughly two percent of the nation's entire population. What could have caused Lincoln to ask the entire nation to pause for a day of thinks and praise in the midst of such devastating loss?

In a Thanksgiving Eve sermon entitled "A Reason to Give Thanks," my father wrote that "people who know their Lord know how to thank him in plenty and in want." Dad observed that the Apostle Paul called upon Christians to "give thanks in all circumstances." 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NIV). "Note that he does not say, 'Give thanks for all circumstances,' but 'give thanks in all circumstances.' Everything that happens to us is not a part of some obscure [but] good plan of God. [It's not all] from God. Until the Kingdom of God fully comes, the forces of evil will continue to rage against us. Terrorists commit unspeakable carnage. Volcanoes spew steaming mud over whole towns of people. Hundreds of thousands perish by drought. Cancer strikes. Marriages fail. Drugs destroy. ... These are not the works of God, and it is a weak defense of God's goodness to say that they sometimes result in good spin-offs  For example, God doesn't cause a baby's death to convert a wayward father. 

We live in a world pocked with evil because God allows freedom to us and to his natural creation. The only unconditional blessing God promises to us is himself, his own presence, in both times of trial and in times of rejoicing. The ultimate reason for giving thanks is that God is God, and he is with us.

Do you remember being ill as a child and your mother or your father just sitting there with you, holding you through the long night? There was precious little they did or could do to relieve the distress of your illness, but somehow their just being there was enough. It is so with God, who is like a father and a mother to us, and even more besides.

My friends, thank God tonight and tomorrow and into all eternity that he is Sovereign Love, that when times are bad and can't get any worse, his presence is our promise of ultimate hope and justice. Yes, we have many reasons to be thankful, but none outshines God himself. Thank him; praise him; love him for himself alone. He is our reason to give thanks!" 

Dad's sermon brought to my mind the last words of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. On his deathbed, Wesley is reported to have said, "The best of all is, God is with us!" God is with us indeed. Happy Thanksgiving, my friends!

"A Reason to Give Thanks"

Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-28