Happy Thanksgiving!

November 26, 2015 at 5:15 am Leave a comment

Thanksgiving Dinner 2 In what has become a bit of Thanksgiving tradition on this blog, I want to share with you a portion of Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation of Thanksgiving from 1863. I will have some additional thoughts on thankfulness in my regular post on Monday. Stay tuned! For now, here’s President Lincoln:

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 come, 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 unequaled 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 … Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. 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.[1]

This Thanksgiving, we have many things for which to be thankful. But as we give thanks for these many things, may we never forget to heartily celebrate and give thanks for, to use the words of Lincoln, “the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.” God’s mercy is the reason that we have not only temporal blessings, but eternal forgiveness, life, and salvation. And for these, we should be thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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[1] Abraham Lincoln, “Proclamation of Thanksgiving” (10.3.1863).