Happy Thanksgiving
To All Ye Pilgrims:
Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience; now, I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November ye 29th of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three, and third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor, and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.
So reads the Thanksgiving proclamation of William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Colony in 1623. Some historians consider the first American Thanksgiving to have happened two years earlier in 1621 when a group of Pilgrims shared a feast with a group of friendly Indians.
Others say: No, the first recorded thanksgiving took place in Virginia more than 11 years before that, and it wasn’t a feast. The winter of 1610 at Jamestown had reduced a group of 409 settlers to 60. The survivors prayed for help, without knowing when or how it might come. When help arrived, in the form of a ship filled with food and supplies from England, a prayer meeting was held to give thanks to God.
One thing is certain. From its earliest origins Thanksgiving has been about giving thanks to God. I encourage you to take time to give God thanks wherever you celebrate this holiday.
I have a lot to be thankful besides the familiar four on Thanksgiving day (family, friends, food and football!). High on my list of thanksgiving is all of you who make up the Grace Place family. I echo the words of Paul thinking about you this Thanksgiving:
I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:3-6)