Lord do it again!

Happy Thanksgiving! Today, as I wake up in my warm home, heat up hot water for tea, and turn on the lights in order to read and write, I give thanks to God. I think now of those pilgrims so long ago who woke on ships rocking in the frigid november waters off the coast in New England--no heat, no electricity, no hot food, no plumbing, no hot showers--and I give thanks for their faithful perseverance. I give thanks to God that my family sleeps in warm, comfortable beds enjoying good health as I think of those pilgrims burying their children and mothers and fathers during that first brutal winter in 1620. Yet they somehow gave thanks in the midst of starvation and sickness and death and uncertainty. How must it have felt to have buried over half of their small number as they clung to survival that first winter? Yet they kept trusting, kept working, kept thanking even in the midst of such insurmountable obstacles and sorrow.

And I think of our nation over 200 years later as she struggled to survive the horrors of Civil War. I just reread Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation and am awed and humbled at such grace, such gratitude in the face of such tragedy. I cannot imagine the weight of worry and sadness and uncertainty, the weight of dealing with a horrific war and the most bitter of divisions that ripped apart families and friends in rancor and hatred, all upon this one, sensitive, truly great man. Yet listen to his opening words in this Proclamation:

"The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they came, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to promote 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..." He goes on to list a number of blessings that even in the midst of war remain unabated from the "plough" to the "shuttle" to "ships" to the increasing population. "No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy." Lincoln therefore urges all Americans to "set apart and observe the last thursday in 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 becomes widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and reverently 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."

O Lord, do it again! Heal this nation's wounds. Restore us to peace and harmony and tranquility. How we lack that right now. There is so much division. So much rancor and ugliness and hate. I've never seen such seemingly impossible extremes. And just like the Civil War, both sides are utterly convinced in the rightness of their cause and the wrongness of the other side's. How on earth can there be healing and restoration? But what a call this is to prayer! If the Lord, in His grace and mercy, could heal this nation after the Civil War, He can do it again. Might we, like Lincoln, pray to the Lord Most High for His miraculous healing and reconciliation for this still great nation.

How can we not be moved by Lincoln's expression of thanksgiving in the midst of so much sorrow? I had to ask forgiveness for my own pettiness and often ungrateful heart. Truly giving thanks has nothing to do with our circumstances or our feelings. Gratitude must come from a heart that constantly seeks to rejoice in who God is and what He is doing. It is choosing to focus upon what we have rather than what we lack. Upon what remains rather than upon what is lost. And of trusting that even when we cannot discern the hand of God, that He is nonetheless at work and working all things out for our greater good and His greater glory.

So this day, might we thank the Lord for the bountiful blessings He has graciously bestowed in each of our lives. For our freedom, for our families, for our friends, for our faith, for our food and the provision for all our basic needs. And thank Him that He is not finished with us or with our nation yet. Might we pray for His healing and restoration in our nation and in our lives. In the words of Habakkuk 3:2 "Lord, I stand in awe of Your fame, I stand in awe of Your deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy." O Lord, in Your grace, do it again. And to God be the glory.