Posts tagged ‘Thanksgiving Proclamation’
Preemptive Thankfulness
It has become a tradition on this blog during Thanksgiving week to take a moment to reflect on a Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation. Thanksgiving is a holiday birthed by our history and in our land and, each year, the president issues a proclamation meant to focus our attention on all the reasons we have to be grateful.
This year, I’d like to take a moment to remember a Thanksgiving Proclamation that was issued after Thanksgiving on December 26, 1941 by President Franklin Roosevelt. He had issued a more traditional Thanksgiving Proclamation on November 8 of that same year, but then, in light of the vicious December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor that lurched us into World War II, President Roosevelt felt the need to issue a second Thanksgiving Proclamation. It read thusly:
“It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord.” Across the uncertain ways of space and time our hearts echo those words, for the days are with us again when, at the gathering of the harvest, we solemnly express our dependence upon Almighty God. The final months of this year, now almost spent, find our Republic and the nations joined with it waging a battle on many fronts for the preservation of liberty. In giving thanks for the greatest harvest in the history of our nation, we who plant and reap can well resolve that in the year to come we will do all in our power to pass that milestone; for by our labors in the fields we can share some part of the sacrifice with our brothers and sons who wear the uniform of the United States. It is fitting that we recall now the reverent words of George Washington, “Almighty God, we make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt keep the United States in Thy holy protection,” and that every American in his own way lift his voice to heaven. I recommend that all of us bear in mind this great Psalm:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me I the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou annointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Inspired with faith and courage by these words, let us turn again to the work that confronts us in this time of national emergency: in the Armed Services and the Merchant Marine; in factories and offices; on farms and in the mines; on highways, railways and airways; in other places of public service to the nation; and in our homes. Now, therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do hereby invite the attention of the people to the joint resolution of Congress approved December 26, 1941, which designates the fourth Thursday in November of each year as Thanksgiving Day and I request that both Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1942, and New Year’s Day, January 1, 1943, be observed in prayer, publicly and privately.
Shortly after Thanksgiving Day 1941 and what was at that point the worst attack on American soil in its history, President Roosevelt issued a proclamation already looking forward to Thanksgiving Day 1942 – nearly a year in advance.
Such a proclamation might, at first, seem tone-deaf. After all, who feels thankful when mourning so much loss, as Americans were after Pearl Harbor? Such a proclamation might also feel premature. After all, by the time Thanksgiving Day 1942 rolled around, wouldn’t the president’s proclamation from the close of 1941 have been long since forgotten? But, despite such concerns, this proclamation was needed.
Gratitude is needed most when history does its worst. For it is at these moments that gratitude focuses us – not so much on what we do or do not have, but on the One to whom we are called to be thankful. Gratitude needs an object. And, as President Roosevelt reminds us in his declaration, the object of our gratitude is rightly God.
It is no secret that 2021 has been a trying year. A pandemic has worn on longer than any of us desired or expected. Political, social, and cultural unrest, upheaval, and distrust have run rampant. And our economic future feels uncertain. How should we respond to times like these? Let’s take a page from President Roosevelt’s book and be preemptively thankful. Thankfulness is not a product of our circumstances, but an orientation of our hearts toward the One who receives our thanks.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Why This Thanksgiving Should Be A Happy One
In what has become a tradition on this blog, this is the week I like to look back on a presidential Thanksgiving proclamation and take a moment to reflect on its significance. Thanksgiving may be a uniquely American holiday, but it is a universally needed and spiritually beneficial practice. This year, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1941 stood out to me:
I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate and set aside Thursday, the twentieth day of November, 1941, as a day to be observed in giving thanks to the Heavenly Source of our earthly blessings.
Our beloved country is free and strong. Our moral and physical defenses against the forces of threatened aggression are mounting daily in magnitude and effectiveness.
In the interest of our own future, we are sending succor at increasing pace to those peoples abroad who are bravely defending their homes and their precious liberties against annihilation.
We have not lost our faith in the spiritual dignity of man, our proud belief in the right of all people to live out their lives in freedom and with equal treatment. The love of democracy still burns brightly in our hearts.
We are grateful to the Father of us all for the innumerable daily manifestations of His beneficent mercy in affairs both public and private, for the bounties of the harvest, for opportunities to labor and to serve, and for the continuance of those homely joys and satisfactions which enrich our lives.
Let us ask the Divine Blessing on our decision and determination to protect our way of life against the forces of evil and slavery which seek in these days to encompass us.
On the day appointed for this purpose, let us reflect at our homes or places of worship on the goodness of God and, in giving thanks, let us pray for a speedy end to strife and the establishment on earth of freedom, brotherhood, and justice for enduring time.
There are lots of good thoughts in President Roosevelt’s proclamation. His recognition that there is a “Heavenly Source of our earthly blessings” reminds us that everything we have ultimately comes from God. His thankfulness for “opportunities to labor and to serve” reminds us that we can be thankful not only for what we have, but for what we can do. And his invitation to “reflect at our homes or places of worship on the goodness of God” is certainly well taken. Thanksgiving, at its heart, is an act of worship.
But it is the historical context that surrounds this proclamation that was especially remarkable to me. President Roosevelt issued this proclamation on November 8, 1941. A month earlier, on October 6, the House of Representatives passed a resolution declaring the last Thursday in November to be Thanksgiving Day. Up to this point, the day of Thanksgiving was not officially set and different presidents chose different dates. Two months later, on December 9, the Senate amended the House resolution to fix the date of Thanksgiving on the fourth – rather than the final – Thursday of November to account for those occasions when November has five Thursdays. President Roosevelt signed the resolution into law on December 26. What makes all this so interesting is what happened in the midst of this legislative history on Monday, December 7, 1941. The United States was plunged into a second world war. And yet, even while our Armed Forces began fighting and our nation was reeling from that “date which will live in infamy,” Congress and the President still found it important to declare a time for our nation to give thanks. They recognized that giving thanks is not only important when times are good, it is also critical when times are terrible.
Though we are blessedly not embroiled in a world war, 2020 has nevertheless been a difficult year for many. This is why it is so important that we pause to give thanks. Giving thanks is not and cannot be based on how well things have gone. It must be a recognition of how gracious God is. As the Psalmist says:
Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever. (Psalm 136:1)
God’s goodness and love remain steadfast even when this world’s brokenness shakes us to our cores. Indeed, God’s goodness and love are so steadfast that God steps into the brokenness of this world in His Son to suffer with us and for us. This is why we cannot only give thanks to the Lord, we can give thanks for the Lord, for the Lord has come for us.
This Thanksgiving, may that be our thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving!
“Freedom from Want” by Norman Rockwell, 1943.
Credit: arthistory.about.com
It’s been all over Facebook. People are posting all the reasons they are thankful. My wife has joined in the Facebook thankfulness fun. As a teacher, she’s organizing her thankfulness thoughts alphabetically – using each letter of the alphabet to call to mind something for which she is thankful. I wonder what she’ll post about when she gets to “Z”?
As we head into another Thanksgiving holiday this week, I want to share with you, as I did last year, some of my favorite thoughts on thankfulness from Abraham 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]
These words are from Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day proclamation of 1863 and, like so many of the posts I’ve seen on Facebook, offer a myriad of reasons to be thankful. But what I appreciate so much about Lincoln’s thoughts on thankfulness – and the reason I share these words again – is that his thankfulness reaches its pinnacle not as he is talking about fruitful fields and healthful skies, or the abundant yields of plough, shuttle, ship, axe, and mines, or the population increase among the states. Rather, President Lincoln’s thankfulness reaches its pinnacle when he speaks of “the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.” In other words, Lincoln is most thankful for what God does through Jesus Christ.
This Thanksgiving, we certainly have many things for which we can be thankful. But as we give thanks for many things, may we never forget to heartily celebrate and give thanks for the most important thing: God’s Son, Jesus Christ. He is the One who gives us reason not only to be thankful for temporal blessings now, but promises us that we will be thankful in eternal dwellings later.
[1] Abraham Lincoln, “Proclamation of Thanksgiving” (10.3.1863).
Giving Thanks To The Lord
On this Thanksgiving Day, it is important to take some time and reflect not only on what we are thankful for, but on whom we are thankful to. As Christians, we give thanks to the Lord, for apart from Him and His grace, we would be left destitute. As James reminds us, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights” (James 1:17). Our heavenly Father provides us with not just some of the things we have, but with all of the things we have. He gives us “every good and perfect gift.”
In an age where Thanksgiving Day is sometimes reduced to little more than a general and foggy sentiment of thankfulness, Abraham Lincoln, in his Thanksgiving Day proclamation of 1863, offers this helpful reflection on whom we should be thankful to:
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…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. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.[1]
May we heed Lincoln’s warning and never be “prone to forget the source from which [our blessings] come.” May we always remember and rejoice that our blessings come from God Almighty.
“Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His love endures forever” (Psalm 107:1).
[1] Abraham Lincoln, “Proclamation of Thanksgiving” (October 3, 1863).
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