Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, and this becomes quite apparent when you live in a foreign land. While I am thrilled to know that we as Americans hold fast to this tradition, I am not sure we fully understand it. It is definitely a time for families to come together, and that is a rarity in far too many homes. It is also a time for remembering all of the blessings that God has given us as a nation, as families and as individuals. But, was that the original idea behind a day of Thanksgiving? Or are we missing something?
Bear with me a moment while I meander to my point. During December 1777, approximately 12,000 soldiers of the Army of the United States were moving onto Valley Forge. While some early triumphs were achieved against the British a year earlier, the past year had seen little success. In fact, one would have to say that the revolutionary forces were clearly losing. The capital had been lost, and Congress was now operating from the outskirts of Pennsylvania. Some even wanted to replace General Washington. Any hope of victory would seem just that, a mere hope. Soldiers were not being paid due to a lack of funds from Congress, and inflation was so bad that soldiers wanted to be paid in British pounds. While most did not have usable clothes, possibly only a third had shoes and when on guard duty, they would stand in their hats in order to protect their feet from the frozen ground.
Wait, it gets worse. General Washington was having to apologize to the citizens of the fledgling nation for literally stealing clothing for his troops. He was unable to properly feed them (hunger had become the norm) and informed them that the plan for surviving the winter was for the soldiers themselves to build shelters of wood and clay. The wood they would have to chop themselves and the clay they would have to make from the frozen ground. This would take at least six weeks. For the soldiers, the prospect was to survive the winter only to be defeated by the waiting British Forces in the spring. I could go into more detail, but know this, things were bad.
On the 18th of December, Congress called for a day of Thanksgiving and Prayer. Think about that for a moment. Amid all of this suffering and failure and gloom ... amid the hunger, sickness and cold ... General Washington tells his troops to stop working and to march to the appropriate locations to give thanks to God.
Do you think they were thanking God for the special blessings they were enjoying? Were they thanking God for the bounty they were about to devour? That is hard to imagine, isn’t it?
But they did give thanks. They gave thanks for what they had to be thankful for. They gave thanks that God was God. That He is the Creator of all things. That He created us and allowed us to know Him. I am sure each of them had their own personal things to thank God for. I am also sure that few were thanking Him for the food and the weather.
I am not telling my children to not be thankful for how God has blessed us. We have a wonderful home, and we will enjoy a fabulous Thanksgiving meal. We have amazing friends and family, and we are blessed with good health and an amazing adventure of a life. We most certainly ought to give thanks for the blessings He has given us. All blessings come from Him. Our nation was right to declare an official day for Thanksgiving in order to acknowledge what we have been given. But our Thanksgiving needs to go beyond this. It needs to recognize that even if all of this were stripped away, we are still called to come to Him with Thanksgiving and praise. We need to remember that long before Abraham Lincoln declared this a national holiday and long before the Continental Congress declared a day of thanksgiving, God had declared everyday to be a day of thanksgiving. It is all over the Bible, but I love the way it is presented in Colossians
“…rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” (Col. 2:6-8)“And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful.” (Col. 3:15)
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts….abounding in thanksgiving.
