Bible Teaching by Wanda Ritter

The First Thanksgiving

“In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

1 Thessalonians 5:18

Here we are – a few days before Thanksgiving.  Many of us are busy shopping for turkeys, making pies, baking squash and whatever is needed for a great Thanksgiving dinner.  Family and friends gather around a sagging table; a short prayer is said to thank God for the food and then we dig in.  We all eat too much and that calls for a nap.  Why do we do this every year?

            Our kids know a little about it from school and the teacher explains about the Pilgrims and the Indians and somehow a turkey gets added to the picture.  I found this article on the web and it reminded me about our forefathers and their struggles so in the future people like us could sit around our tables and enjoy all the food.

            There is so much more we should think about and remember on Thanksgiving Day and be doubly grateful to the God who has provided for us.

             Many Americans think of Thanksgiving as a wonderful time to celebrate getting out of school for a long weekend, and eating a great dinner. Or, maybe they think it is the start of the Christmas holiday season. What is the real meaning behind Thanksgiving? Catherine Millard writes:  We can trace this historic American Christian tradition to the year 1623. After the harvest crops were gathered in November 1623, Governor William Bradford of the 1620 Pilgrim Colony, “Plymouth Plantation” in Plymouth, Massachusetts proclaimed: "All ye Pilgrims with your wives and little ones, do gather at the Meeting House, on the hill… there to listen to the pastor, and render Thanksgiving to the Almighty God for all His blessings."

            This is the origin of our annual Thanksgiving Day celebration. Congress of the United States has proclaimed National Days of Thanksgiving to Almighty God many times throughout the following years. On November 1, 1777, by order of Congress, the first National Thanksgiving Proclamation was proclaimed, and signed by Henry Laurens, President of Continental Congress. The third Thursday of December, 1777 was thus officially set aside:   for solemn thanksgiving and praise. That with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their Divine Benefactor;… and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them (their manifold sins) out of remembrance… That it may please Him… to take schools and seminaries of education, so necessary for cultivating the principles of true liberty, virtue and piety under His nurturing hand, and to prosper the means of religion for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consists of 'righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost'…"

            Then again, on January 1, 1795, our first United States President, George Washington, wrote his famed National Thanksgiving Proclamation, in which he says that it is…our duty as a people, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge our many and great obligations to Almighty God, and to implore Him to continue is… our duty as a people, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge our many and great obligations to Almighty God, and to implore Him to continue and confirm the blessings we experienced…"

            Thursday, the 19th day of February, 1795 was thus set aside by George Washington as a National Day of Thanksgiving.

            Many years later, on October 3, 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed, by Act of Congress, an annual National Day of Thanksgiving "on the last Thursday of November, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwells in the heavens." In this Thanksgiving proclamation, our 16th President says that it is… announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord… But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, by the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own… It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people…" 

            So it is that on Thanksgiving Day each year, Americans give thanks to Almighty God for all His blessings and mercies toward us throughout the year.  Let’s remember why we have the freedom today to be blessed.  However, we must realize that as we look at our nation today, we see a great division in our country.  As we think about the first thanksgiving, we see a very grateful people who have survived only by the Grace o God.                                                                                                               One of my ancestors came to America on the Mayflower, Edward Samuel Fuller.  If he hadn’t trusted God and took the risk of coming here, I would not have been alive.  I am thankful for my ancestors and for God Almighty for keeping them safe. Being thankful isn’t just about how much money you have or the big house you own; it’s about everything in your life that God has provided including your family.

            This country is so blessed and we should be thanking God for it, not devising ways to tear it apart.  If we as a nation want God to keep blessing us, then we need to be giving Him thanks for all we have here.  Remember, on Thanksgiving Day, to thank God we live in America.