Happy Thanksgiving: A Day to Give Thanks for God's Good Gifts

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Michigan

 It is Thanksgiving Morning.  I am blessed with family, friends. I am grateful for the freedom that retirement has brought me and with it the opportunity to serve a congregation as its supply pastor for a season. I am a child of God, living in relationship with God in Christ through the Spirit.  

Thanksgiving Day has always had a harvest theme -- one that goes back to the Hebrew Bible.  Even though I've always lived in the city and gathered my food not from the land itself, but from the grocery store (there are some who question the validity of a harvest based holiday in an urban age, but I think that there is sufficient imagination that we can get the picture).  I grew up with Psalm 100 as the central text of the day, for it is an invitation to join with the rest of creation in making a "joyful noise to the Lord"  

Psalm 100 NRSV

A Psalm of thanksgiving.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
    Worship the Lord with gladness;
    come into his presence with singing.

Know that the Lord is God.
    It is he that made us, and we are his;
    we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
    and his courts with praise.
    Give thanks to him, bless his name.

For the Lord is good;
    his steadfast love endures forever,
    and his faithfulness to all generations.



On this day we must stop to consider that not everyone is in a position to give thanks. We think of all who suffer. We ponder the realities of our time with COVID and political instability. There are reasons to be concerned. Nevertheless, if we're able, let us stop for a moment, even as we eat dinners and perhaps watch football games and parades to remember that the Lord is Good and that God's "steadfast love endures forever."  It is this message of divine love that needs to carry the day. May we, together, join in celebrating God's blessings by being that blessing to the creation.  

As a special treat, I invite you to experience the song "All Good Gifts" from Godspell, one of my favorites.





Happy Thanksgiving!

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