{"id":541,"date":"2019-11-29T17:08:02","date_gmt":"2019-11-29T17:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/?p=541"},"modified":"2019-11-29T22:11:42","modified_gmt":"2019-11-29T22:11:42","slug":"thanksgiving-eve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/2019\/11\/29\/thanksgiving-eve\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving Eve"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

   Deuteronomy\n26:1-11<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grace to you and peace\nfrom God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According\nto Wikipedia: Thanksgiving<\/strong> is a federal holiday<\/a>, celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. It\noriginated as a harvest festival<\/a>. The event that Americans commonly call the\n“First Thanksgiving” was celebrated long before our country was a\ncountry and long before our country decided to say thank you to the Lord; it\nwas celebrated by the Pilgrims<\/a> after their first\nharvest in the New World<\/a>\nin October 1621. This feast lasted for three days, and\u2014as accounted by attendee\nEdward Winslow<\/a>\u2014it was attended by 90 Native Americans<\/a> and 53 Pilgrims. It is recorded that the New England<\/a> colonists regularly celebrating\n“thanksgivings”\u2014or days of prayer<\/a> thanking God for such blessings as a military victory\nor the end of a drought. As a nation Thanksgiving has been celebrated on and\noff since 1789, after a proclamation by George Washington<\/a> was made as\nrequested by Congress. Thomas Jefferson<\/a> chose not to\nobserve the holiday, and its celebration was intermittent until the presidency\nof Abraham Lincoln<\/a>, when in 1863 Lincoln proclaimed a national day of\n“Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father<\/a> who dwelleth in the\nHeavens,” to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November. Under\nPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt<\/a>, the date was changed<\/a> amid\nsignificant controversy but from 1942 onwards, Thanksgiving as proclaimed by Congress<\/a> has been celebrated on the fourth Thursday in\nNovember. That\u2019s the history!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it is important to note that while the Pilgrims\nand apparently also Abraham Lincoln celebrated Thanksgiving as a day of\nthanksgiving to God<\/strong>, for many people, even now in the 21st<\/sup>\ncentury, Thanksgiving comes and goes without the least mention of God. I would\nventure to say that a great number of Thanksgiving meals that will take place\ntomorrow, will do so without a thought to saying, even the simplest of prayers,\nin order to thank God for all that we as Americans have or to even thank God\nfor the meal itself.  It is not that, everyone\nwho fails to pray, is not thankful for all that they have and enjoy, it is just\nthat for many, God is not thought of as the one who made such a bounty possible\nand, in some cases, God is not thought of at all. Many people are thankful,\nrather, to their employers, to family, to friends, to charitable organizations,\nto their country, to restaurant chefs, or to their own ingenuity and success. Many\nwho forget or just do not take the time to thank God for their bounty are\nChristians. Many of these Christians will just get swept up in the excitement\nof having family to visit, chasing around young children or trying to fit the\nmeal in between football games, or will just simply forget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our\nThanksgiving holiday may not have been established by God or by the church, but\nit is certainly worthy of our celebration and is a good reminder that God has\ntruly blessed us, and as such, an important aspect of the Thanksgiving\ncelebration for us as Christians should be to remember to say thank you to God the\nFather and thank you to Jesus and thank you to the Holy Spirit. Can it be that\nit is so very hard for us to say thank you; so hard for us to remember to say\nthank you? While our Thanksgiving, as we celebrate it today, originated in the\nhalls of Congress and has been proclaimed by politicians, in truth God called\nfor such celebrations back in the time of Moses. I can\u2019t help but to think that\nevery thanksgiving celebration has at its roots in God\u2019s call for Moses to\ncommand first fruits offerings as a way of acknowledging God\u2019s hand in\neverything that was given to the People of God. While Moses does not\nspecifically call upon the people to say the words \u201cthank you\u201d to God for their\nbounty, it is certainly understood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\nwe enjoy Thanksgiving for the food, for the opportunity that a lot of us have to\nbe with family and friends, for the parades and (of course) for the football. There\nis nothing wrong with any of that, as long as, we take just the tiniest period\nof our time, to say thank you to the Lord. Can you, can we do that? Or are we\nso enamored with your own accomplishments that we think we have come by all\nthat we have by our own wits and successes? Does our pride get in the way? Honestly,\nI can\u2019t see these things as being a problem for us; these are the problems of\nthose people who live grand and famous lives. My accomplishments are not nearly\ngreat enough, my wits and successes are nothing special, as a pastor I gave up\npride a long time ago, so saying thank you is not nearly as hard for me and I\nwould guess for you. What do you think?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nmay not feel as thankful, when the weather is bad, or the food is not up to\npar, or everyone that I want to see does not come to dinner, or the parade is\nnot great, or Dallas wins, but I am so very blessed; I will certainly find the\ntime to thank the Lord. Think of all that we have to be thankful for, not only\nthe world around us, but most special, the gift of Jesus to our world and to\nall who will follow him the promise of forgiveness and salvation. All that he\nhas earned for the world by his life, deeds, sacrifice and death on a cross. Of\nall people, those of us who know Jesus have so much more to give thanks for. And\nthere is the Holy Spirit; not only was the Spirit of the Lord given to us, but\nthe Holy Spirit has showered us with gifts of preaching and teaching and\nhelping and prophecy and learning and faith and opportunities for joy and more.\nGive thanks to our Triune God; don\u2019t let yourselves forget; the triune God has\nnot and will not forget us. Have a happy and blessed Thanksgiving!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

   Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ According to Wikipedia: Thanksgiving is a federal holiday, celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. It originated as a harvest festival. The event that Americans commonly call the “First Thanksgiving” was celebrated long Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons-and-services"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}