Even in the darkest hours, a summons to thanksgiving
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, November 22, 2006
Give thanks to the LORD, the Psalmist said, “call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of his wonderful acts.”
But there’s another side to thanksgiving as well: The thankful heart that rejoices even in the darkest hour. When he could not sleep, perhaps being wracked by guilt, the Psalmist said, “At midnight, I rise to give you thanks for your righteous laws” – the very laws that caused his insomnia.
Facing the decree that he would be thrown into the lion’s den, Daniel “went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.”
Fast forward to the winter of 1621, when the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock, “haveing undertaken, for the glorie of God, and advancemente of the Christian faith and honour of our king & countrie, a voyage to plant the first colonie in the Northerne parts in the British Colonies” (The Mayflower Compact).
Yet nearly half of the ship’s passengers died that winter. Glossed history leaves the impression that they had a sumptuous thanksgiving meal and all went well.
In 1777, England, ruling the seas and having the world’s best-trained and best-equipped army, was still overwhelmingly favored to repress the Colonialists. Leaders such as Gen. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams – who had pledged their “lives and fortunes and sacred honor” to freedom’s call – would surely be shamed and hanged. They would not be certain of victory until 1781, when the Colonial Army forced British troops to surrender at Yorktown.
But in 1777, fully aware of the possibility of defeat and death, Washington and the Continental Congress called for a day of Thanksgiving. Later, as president, Washington signed a proclamation formalizing Thanksgiving as an annual observance, calling “the people of the United States [to] a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”
In 1863, at the height of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln also saw that gratitude was appropriate even out of the darkness of the nation’s bloodiest conflict (nearly 1 million casualties and the deaths of 620,000 soldiers).
Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation, two years before the end of the Civil War, summoned Americans to be thankful that, “In the midst of a civil war of unequalled 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.”
But Americans should also, Lincoln added, “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.”
While Washington and Lincoln issued Thanksgiving proclamations in the depths of war, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued one in 1939 when the nation remained in the throes of economic ruin even a decade after the 1929 Black Friday stock market collapse. Roosevelt’s proclamation moved thanksgiving from the fourth Thursday in November to the third Thursday – mainly to give merchants an extra week of pre-Christmas sales.
While Roosevelt’s proclamation – dubbed “Franksgiving” by one newspaper editor – had a secular economic purpose, it also contributed to the trivilization of Thanksgiving (hence, “Turkey Day”).
But there is nothing trivial about thanksgiving in Scripture.
During his last meal with his disciples, facing his darkest hour, Jesus “took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you.’ Hours later, he would say, as he atoned for the sins of the world, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?'”
For the Christian, the essence of thanksgiving was to be grateful not only for comforts and plenty, but for the blood of Christ that cleansed them from all unrighteousness. “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?” Paul rhetorically asked in his first letter to the Corinthians.
In Ephesians, Paul sets thanksgiving apart from the trivial and the profane. “Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.”
Thanksgiving is not about us. “I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone – for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness,” Paul said in his letter to Timothy, his young companion and fellow church-planter.
Thanksgiving that is grounded in one’s hope, not circumstance, builds character. “And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God,” Paul wrote to the church at Rome. “Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”
Finally, thanksgiving is the proper recognition of the sovereign reign of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. “And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying: ‘We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign'” (Revelation 11:16-18).