May God’s richest blessings fill your heart and life through the love of Jesus!
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Renee and I are so very thankful for you!
1 Chronicles 16:8 — “Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon His name, make known His deeds among the people.”
It seems as though, over the past decade, great effort has been made to hinder people — from children on up — from freely speaking about Almighty God, the One to whom we owe every good thing in our lives.
If a child were asked to write a Thanksgiving poem in school today, it might sound something like this:
Thanks, You-Know-Who…
The pilgrims came here seeking freedom of you-know-what.
When they landed, they gave thanks to you-know-who.
Because of them, we can worship each Sunday, you-know-where.
But on this Thanksgiving, may we remember one of our great leaders from the past — a man who had no hesitation speaking openly about the thanks and prayers owed to Almighty God, who has so richly blessed our nation.
These are the words of President Abraham Lincoln, written April 30, 1863:
“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.
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, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace — too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
With that same humble spirit, may we gather with those we love this Thanksgiving and offer bold repentance and heartfelt thanksgiving to our God — the One who has blessed our great nation and the only One who can set it back on the right path.
Psalm 94:17 (NLT) — “Unless the LORD had helped me, I would soon have settled in the silence of the grave.”
