The Feast Awaits
Stories
Contents
“The Feast Awaits” by Peter Andrew Smith
“Yes, Jesus Loves Me” by David O. Bales
“Preparing For Thanksgiving Day” by David O. Bales
The Feast Awaits
by Peter Andrew Smith
Joel 2:21-27
Margie sat on the edge of her bed. She hated this place and wished she was still in her own home. She should have fought the boys harder when they insisted she come here. She tried to hold the tears back, but they began to roll down her cheeks.
“What’s the matter, dear?” Annie asked from the hallway.
Margie wiped her face and looked up at one of the other residents sitting in her wheelchair.
“Just something in my eye.” Margie got up and smoothed the blankets on the bed. “I’m fine.”
“Ah. I had something in my eye when I first came to the nursing home, too,”Annie sighed. “I had spent so long on my own that I hated when I ended up here. Can I come in?””
Margie nodded and sat back down on the bed. “I was doing fine.”
“I’m sure you were.” Annie rolled her chair into the room.
“I just forget sometimes.” Margie looked at Annie. “That’s normal as we grow older, isn’t it?”
“Sure.” Annie reached out her hand. “I’m Annie by the way.”
“I remember.” Margie smiled. “You introduced yourself last night when the staff were showing me around.”
“Did I?” Annie shrugged. “I have a problem remembering sometimes. It’s one of the reasons my kids say I need to be here. What brings you here?”
“My sons got scared the last time I fell and didn’t tell them.” Margie waved her hand. “They made such a fuss about it.”
“You any good at making breakfast?”
Margie tilted her head. “They have staff here to do that, don’t they?”
“They sure do. Jean is an excellent cook.” Annie narrowed her eyes. “Andre isn’t half bad too, but he only likes to make fancy things.”
“So why did you ask me if I was good at making breakfast?”
“I wanted to know what you had yesterday morning.”
Margie tapped her chin. “Toast and tea. I have that most mornings.”
“Is it Sunday?”
Margie nodded.
“Then if my terrible memory is still working that means homemade waffles with whipped cream, bacon, fruit cups, toast, and tea or coffee is on the menu for today.” Annie looked at the ceiling for a second. “And of course, there is always porridge too.”
“That sound like more that I could eat.”
“Do you know the best things about it?”
“That it is all freshly made?” Margie asked.
“Someone does all the dishes.” Annie grinned. “We just eat and then walk away from the table.”
“It will be nice to not do the dishes.”
Annie nodded. “Lots of other things are pretty good too. You know we have a theatre downstairs?”
“I think the staff person who gave me the tour mentioned it.”
“They’ll be a movie tonight. Probably an old black and white film.” Annie shrugged. “Me -- I’d like to see a new action flick.”
Margie frowned. “They don’t let you watch those types of movies in here?”
“Naw, we just have to wait until Friday. Sunday they always show more of a family movie.”
Margie smiled. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Bascially everything comes to us. This afternoon Pastor Kurt will be in for those who like church. The singing isn’t the best, but he gives a good message.”
“That actually sounds nice.”
Annie tapped her chin. “It is kind of what the prophet says when he talks about the people rejoicing in the second chapter of Joel. We’ve all had it rough, but everyone here takes good care of us, and we look out for one another.”
Margie looked at her neighbor’s kind face and felt herself relax a bit. “It is nice to have someone to talk to. Sometimes it got pretty lonely in the house all by myself after Jack died.”
“Well finding someone to talk to is never a problem here. There are always people around and always something to do. If you want to just sit in your room you can, and people will leave you alone.” Annie frowned. “You didn’t want to be left alone, did you? My daughter says I always have a habit of forgetting that some people want to be left alone.
Margie shook her head. “No, you’re always welcome to come and talk to me Annie. I think we’ll be great friends.”
“I’m always happy to have a new friend.” Annie tilted her head. “You may have to remind me we are great friends though because my memory isn’t always the best.”
“I think I can do that.” Margie stood up and smoothed her dress. “Would you like to show me where breakfast is Annie?”
“I thought you would never ask.”
With her new friend beside her, Margie left her fear and worry behind and went toward the sounds of laugher and hope.
* * *
Yes, Jesus Loves Me
by David O. Bales
Matthew 6:25-33
Billy Graham told of Karl Barth’s 1962 lecture tour of the United States. Barth was one of the most influential Christian teachers in the 20th century, as much for his political stand against Naziism as his gigantic (if not always easy to understand) statement of theology. When the majority of Christians in Germany were swept by the Nazis into the “Make Germany Great Again” movement, Barth and the minority of Christians banded into the “Confessing Church.” They stood against Christian nationalism, which in religious terms is idolatry of nation or, more colloquially, it assumes a favored nation clause with God.
Barth visited the United States after he retired as professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Here he met with religious leaders and lectured. After one lecture, as Graham told, a student asked Barth if he could summarize his life’s teaching in one sentence. This pleased Barth. With a twinkle in his eye he replied that, yes, in a song he’d learned at his mother’s knee: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
Jesus lays the foundation for our trusting that God loves us. He does it with his life and teaching, a teaching that one can almost see. He instructs his listeners to consider birds, flowers and grass and then summons us to compare ourselves to those dabs of nature: “Are you not of more value than they?” Jesus doesn’t teach that humans are sinless and innocently pure. Yet, God loves us. The Christian faith is based on this conviction that we are of great worth to God, even if others don’t value us, even if we don’t value ourselves. “Jesus loves me, this I know.” It’s a simple, in the sense of basic, understanding of our relation to God. It’s the one understanding of God that we need constantly (although not exclusively, for sure) to be reminded of.
I was at a week of study leave with pastors in Hastings, Nebraska. One of the speakers was Ben Campbell Johnson, professor of evangelism at Columbia Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He spoke that first morning on what we later realized was his favorite text for pastors: “for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable,” Romans 11:29. He dragged us through the ways pastors undervalue themselves, not only because they might not be experiencing success in their ministry, but by emphasizing their sins and doubts. However, Ben proclaimed to us that if we are gifted and called to be a pastor, that’s what God intends. I was pleased to sit with him at lunch and talk with him. I said, “You know what you were doing this morning.” He with his wide smile and southern accent said, “No, David, what was I doing?” I answered, “You were preaching good news to the poor.” His laughter was a shout of joy. I’ve cherished Ben and how he taught of God’s love. One could summarize his message: Jesus loves me.
Over 160 years ago Anna Bartlett wrote the words to “Jesus Loves Me.” It has more verses, but verse one and the chorus are what people remember. Many people recall where they sang it as children. Missionaries around the world have taught the faithful to sing it in myriad languages. Some people were converted to Christianity by hearing or singing it. For me it answers the question: Do people need to be told they’re terrible or that God loves them?
I heard about Robert Cornwall who in the 1960s was pastor of an Assembly of God church in Salem, Oregon. The Oregon State Mental Hospital agreed to his being a part-time counselor. He was assigned to the hospital’s worst building that housed the most severely afflicted mental patients. The people gathered in the filthy circumstances were poorly dressed and by the way they spoke and acted exhibited little hope they’d regain sanity.
Cornwall didn’t have much success talking with the people but felt the Holy Spirit telling him to sit in the middle of the room and sing “Jesus Loves Me.” He sang for an hour and perceived no response from the patients; but he returned the next week and sat in the room and sang “Jesus Loves Me.” He received a response on his third visit when a large, intimidating woman also began singing it as she walked circles around him. Week by week more people sang. Slowly individuals were transferred to the self-care ward and a year later only two from the ward hadn’t been declared mentally stable and released from the hospital.
“Jesus Loves Me” is a theme song of Christianity that serves our deepest need to be loved; that’s why the song shows up everywhere. John Hersey was a news correspondent in WWII and became a Pulitzer Prize winner. In 1943 he wrote about (future US President) John F. Kennedy and the survivors of his crew. Off the Solomon Islands a Japanese destroyer had sliced their PT boat in half. At the end of his article Hersey reported the rescued crew’s evacuation. He wrote about Johnston, one of the enlisted men, saying that “he retired topside and sat with his arms around a couple of the roly-poly, mission trained natives. And in the fresh breeze on the way home they sang together a hymn all three happened to know:
Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so;
Little ones to Him belong,
They are weak, but He is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me; yes, Jesus loves me …”
No further verses necessary.
Preaching point: God so loved the world.
* * *
Preparing For Thanksgiving Day
by David O. Bales
1 Timothy 2:1-7
The male pastors did it to Vanessa again, treated her like a secretary. And she’d taken it. Smiled and swallowed hard and nodded that, yes, she’d pull together their thoughts about a community Thanksgiving worship. Their ideas, her work.
When Vanessa first arrived in Halford, she’d been stuck with the five-congregation senior high retreat that everyone had ignored until the last minute. She could forgive herself for diving in and pulling it off. It served the students and maybe gained her some credibility as the first female pastor in town. But now, as the tense — it seemed to her — meeting between the evangelical and main-line pastors adjourned, she spoke up about her new task. “In writing,” she said. “My deadline will be two weeks from today, and deliver your ideas to me in writing, preferably typed.”
A couple of the men laughed, a few nodded, some seemed put out by her impertinence. No matter. If she were to collate all their thoughts and arrange for the advertising of the community worship service, which promised to be different from anything Halford had seen for generations, she needed time to work.
The title for the community Thanksgiving Day worship, “Thanksgiving In The Christian Life,” grew from the meeting. Today’s “gathering” — not an official meeting because some congregations didn’t accept pastors beyond certain doctrinal bounds — created a worship team as well as assigned someone, Vanessa, to arrange advertising that emphasized what Christians need to remember in the United States at Thanksgiving.
When the submissions trickled into her email, snail mail, and a couple delivered to her office, her feelings of being put upon faded. Many ideas were repeated, and some were banal, but Vanessa was amazed at what pastors thought Christians should be reminded of on Thanksgiving Day. She also enjoyed guessing from their submissions where the pastors had been raised and how they were educated.
She used the first submissions to generate a list of themes. But she waited a day beyond her announced deadline to start writing, having judged correctly that some pastors are habitually late. Because all these pastors were males, she could (but of course she wouldn’t!) judge that male pastors weren’t as good with details as females.
She’d add the information of the meeting place, musicians, and speakers after the worship team delivered those final arrangements. For now, she was pleased and excited with the ideas that came across her desk. She set out to compile and mail to all congregations a summary of the planned Thanksgiving Day worship and what Christians in the United States should recall on that day.
“First and always, we are thankful for Jesus. He teaches us to be grateful even in the worst of circumstances. We remember that on the night of his arrest he gave thanks to God for the cup and the loaf while his ministry was proving to be a failure and his life was about to end in torture and humiliation (Luke 22:17-19). The Greek word of Jesus’ thanksgiving, eucharisteo has become the name for the celebration of his last supper.
“In the early Christian church, thanksgiving was the identifying aspect of Christian life. The early church father Tertullian declared, ‘The Christian, even when condemned to die, gives thanks.’
“Our modern Thanksgiving Day celebrations, while recalling the pilgrims, forget that on our North American continent earlier Christian Thanksgiving services are reported: April 30, 1598 south of El Paso, Texas; June 30, 1564 in Saint Augustine, Florida; and December 4, 1619 at the Berkeley Plantation, Virginia.
“The best remembered and most celebrated thanksgiving of the Pilgrims occurred because they were blown off course on their way to Virginia and landed instead on Cape Cod. Of the 102 passengers aboard the Mayflower, the minority were pilgrims. The others came seeking riches in the new land. During their first winter in which nearly half died, they were kept alive by the wisdom and generosity of Native-Americans. When the suggestion of a celebration was considered in 1621, at first a service of lamentation seemed appropriate; yet, the survivors decided upon a time of thanksgiving, to which the Native-Americans brought more of the food.
“During the Revolutionary War on November 1, 1777, the Second Continental Congress issued the first thanksgiving proclamation that extended to all the colonies. President George Washington proclaimed our first national Thanksgiving Day in the United States to celebrate the formation of the newc on November 26, 1789. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln (spurred by the lobbying of Sarah Josepha Hale) proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a federal holiday and it has been so proclaimed ever since.
“As we reflect upon our nation’s Thanksgivings, we should recall that the Ku Klux Klan was rejuvenated — now not just persecuting blacks but also suppressing Roman Catholics and Jews — with a cross-burning ceremony atop Stone Mountain, Georgia, Thanksgiving Day, 1915.
“Gratitude is the basis not only of our Christian life and is a sign of healthy well-being for anyone. It’s important to remember that gratitude is expressed better by deeds than by words. The Bantu language in Africa has no word for ‘thank you,’ as was also made famous about the language of the Kwakiutl First Peoples in Canada in Margaret Craven’s novel I Heard the Owl Call My Name.”
Having collated so many different ideas and concerns from the other pastors, Vanessa couldn’t pass up the chance to add her own, “We do well this Thanksgiving to pray the old prayer, ‘For all your blessings, known and unknown, remembered and forgotten, we give you thanks O Lord,’” She was now looking forward (gratefully) to the community’s “Celebration of Thanksgiving In The Christian Life.”
Preaching point: Matters to remember and contemplate on Thanksgiving Day.
*****************************************
StoryShare, November 25, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“The Feast Awaits” by Peter Andrew Smith
“Yes, Jesus Loves Me” by David O. Bales
“Preparing For Thanksgiving Day” by David O. Bales
The Feast Awaits
by Peter Andrew Smith
Joel 2:21-27
Margie sat on the edge of her bed. She hated this place and wished she was still in her own home. She should have fought the boys harder when they insisted she come here. She tried to hold the tears back, but they began to roll down her cheeks.
“What’s the matter, dear?” Annie asked from the hallway.
Margie wiped her face and looked up at one of the other residents sitting in her wheelchair.
“Just something in my eye.” Margie got up and smoothed the blankets on the bed. “I’m fine.”
“Ah. I had something in my eye when I first came to the nursing home, too,”Annie sighed. “I had spent so long on my own that I hated when I ended up here. Can I come in?””
Margie nodded and sat back down on the bed. “I was doing fine.”
“I’m sure you were.” Annie rolled her chair into the room.
“I just forget sometimes.” Margie looked at Annie. “That’s normal as we grow older, isn’t it?”
“Sure.” Annie reached out her hand. “I’m Annie by the way.”
“I remember.” Margie smiled. “You introduced yourself last night when the staff were showing me around.”
“Did I?” Annie shrugged. “I have a problem remembering sometimes. It’s one of the reasons my kids say I need to be here. What brings you here?”
“My sons got scared the last time I fell and didn’t tell them.” Margie waved her hand. “They made such a fuss about it.”
“You any good at making breakfast?”
Margie tilted her head. “They have staff here to do that, don’t they?”
“They sure do. Jean is an excellent cook.” Annie narrowed her eyes. “Andre isn’t half bad too, but he only likes to make fancy things.”
“So why did you ask me if I was good at making breakfast?”
“I wanted to know what you had yesterday morning.”
Margie tapped her chin. “Toast and tea. I have that most mornings.”
“Is it Sunday?”
Margie nodded.
“Then if my terrible memory is still working that means homemade waffles with whipped cream, bacon, fruit cups, toast, and tea or coffee is on the menu for today.” Annie looked at the ceiling for a second. “And of course, there is always porridge too.”
“That sound like more that I could eat.”
“Do you know the best things about it?”
“That it is all freshly made?” Margie asked.
“Someone does all the dishes.” Annie grinned. “We just eat and then walk away from the table.”
“It will be nice to not do the dishes.”
Annie nodded. “Lots of other things are pretty good too. You know we have a theatre downstairs?”
“I think the staff person who gave me the tour mentioned it.”
“They’ll be a movie tonight. Probably an old black and white film.” Annie shrugged. “Me -- I’d like to see a new action flick.”
Margie frowned. “They don’t let you watch those types of movies in here?”
“Naw, we just have to wait until Friday. Sunday they always show more of a family movie.”
Margie smiled. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Bascially everything comes to us. This afternoon Pastor Kurt will be in for those who like church. The singing isn’t the best, but he gives a good message.”
“That actually sounds nice.”
Annie tapped her chin. “It is kind of what the prophet says when he talks about the people rejoicing in the second chapter of Joel. We’ve all had it rough, but everyone here takes good care of us, and we look out for one another.”
Margie looked at her neighbor’s kind face and felt herself relax a bit. “It is nice to have someone to talk to. Sometimes it got pretty lonely in the house all by myself after Jack died.”
“Well finding someone to talk to is never a problem here. There are always people around and always something to do. If you want to just sit in your room you can, and people will leave you alone.” Annie frowned. “You didn’t want to be left alone, did you? My daughter says I always have a habit of forgetting that some people want to be left alone.
Margie shook her head. “No, you’re always welcome to come and talk to me Annie. I think we’ll be great friends.”
“I’m always happy to have a new friend.” Annie tilted her head. “You may have to remind me we are great friends though because my memory isn’t always the best.”
“I think I can do that.” Margie stood up and smoothed her dress. “Would you like to show me where breakfast is Annie?”
“I thought you would never ask.”
With her new friend beside her, Margie left her fear and worry behind and went toward the sounds of laugher and hope.
* * *
Yes, Jesus Loves Me
by David O. Bales
Matthew 6:25-33
Billy Graham told of Karl Barth’s 1962 lecture tour of the United States. Barth was one of the most influential Christian teachers in the 20th century, as much for his political stand against Naziism as his gigantic (if not always easy to understand) statement of theology. When the majority of Christians in Germany were swept by the Nazis into the “Make Germany Great Again” movement, Barth and the minority of Christians banded into the “Confessing Church.” They stood against Christian nationalism, which in religious terms is idolatry of nation or, more colloquially, it assumes a favored nation clause with God.
Barth visited the United States after he retired as professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Here he met with religious leaders and lectured. After one lecture, as Graham told, a student asked Barth if he could summarize his life’s teaching in one sentence. This pleased Barth. With a twinkle in his eye he replied that, yes, in a song he’d learned at his mother’s knee: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
Jesus lays the foundation for our trusting that God loves us. He does it with his life and teaching, a teaching that one can almost see. He instructs his listeners to consider birds, flowers and grass and then summons us to compare ourselves to those dabs of nature: “Are you not of more value than they?” Jesus doesn’t teach that humans are sinless and innocently pure. Yet, God loves us. The Christian faith is based on this conviction that we are of great worth to God, even if others don’t value us, even if we don’t value ourselves. “Jesus loves me, this I know.” It’s a simple, in the sense of basic, understanding of our relation to God. It’s the one understanding of God that we need constantly (although not exclusively, for sure) to be reminded of.
I was at a week of study leave with pastors in Hastings, Nebraska. One of the speakers was Ben Campbell Johnson, professor of evangelism at Columbia Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He spoke that first morning on what we later realized was his favorite text for pastors: “for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable,” Romans 11:29. He dragged us through the ways pastors undervalue themselves, not only because they might not be experiencing success in their ministry, but by emphasizing their sins and doubts. However, Ben proclaimed to us that if we are gifted and called to be a pastor, that’s what God intends. I was pleased to sit with him at lunch and talk with him. I said, “You know what you were doing this morning.” He with his wide smile and southern accent said, “No, David, what was I doing?” I answered, “You were preaching good news to the poor.” His laughter was a shout of joy. I’ve cherished Ben and how he taught of God’s love. One could summarize his message: Jesus loves me.
Over 160 years ago Anna Bartlett wrote the words to “Jesus Loves Me.” It has more verses, but verse one and the chorus are what people remember. Many people recall where they sang it as children. Missionaries around the world have taught the faithful to sing it in myriad languages. Some people were converted to Christianity by hearing or singing it. For me it answers the question: Do people need to be told they’re terrible or that God loves them?
I heard about Robert Cornwall who in the 1960s was pastor of an Assembly of God church in Salem, Oregon. The Oregon State Mental Hospital agreed to his being a part-time counselor. He was assigned to the hospital’s worst building that housed the most severely afflicted mental patients. The people gathered in the filthy circumstances were poorly dressed and by the way they spoke and acted exhibited little hope they’d regain sanity.
Cornwall didn’t have much success talking with the people but felt the Holy Spirit telling him to sit in the middle of the room and sing “Jesus Loves Me.” He sang for an hour and perceived no response from the patients; but he returned the next week and sat in the room and sang “Jesus Loves Me.” He received a response on his third visit when a large, intimidating woman also began singing it as she walked circles around him. Week by week more people sang. Slowly individuals were transferred to the self-care ward and a year later only two from the ward hadn’t been declared mentally stable and released from the hospital.
“Jesus Loves Me” is a theme song of Christianity that serves our deepest need to be loved; that’s why the song shows up everywhere. John Hersey was a news correspondent in WWII and became a Pulitzer Prize winner. In 1943 he wrote about (future US President) John F. Kennedy and the survivors of his crew. Off the Solomon Islands a Japanese destroyer had sliced their PT boat in half. At the end of his article Hersey reported the rescued crew’s evacuation. He wrote about Johnston, one of the enlisted men, saying that “he retired topside and sat with his arms around a couple of the roly-poly, mission trained natives. And in the fresh breeze on the way home they sang together a hymn all three happened to know:
Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so;
Little ones to Him belong,
They are weak, but He is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me; yes, Jesus loves me …”
No further verses necessary.
Preaching point: God so loved the world.
* * *
Preparing For Thanksgiving Day
by David O. Bales
1 Timothy 2:1-7
The male pastors did it to Vanessa again, treated her like a secretary. And she’d taken it. Smiled and swallowed hard and nodded that, yes, she’d pull together their thoughts about a community Thanksgiving worship. Their ideas, her work.
When Vanessa first arrived in Halford, she’d been stuck with the five-congregation senior high retreat that everyone had ignored until the last minute. She could forgive herself for diving in and pulling it off. It served the students and maybe gained her some credibility as the first female pastor in town. But now, as the tense — it seemed to her — meeting between the evangelical and main-line pastors adjourned, she spoke up about her new task. “In writing,” she said. “My deadline will be two weeks from today, and deliver your ideas to me in writing, preferably typed.”
A couple of the men laughed, a few nodded, some seemed put out by her impertinence. No matter. If she were to collate all their thoughts and arrange for the advertising of the community worship service, which promised to be different from anything Halford had seen for generations, she needed time to work.
The title for the community Thanksgiving Day worship, “Thanksgiving In The Christian Life,” grew from the meeting. Today’s “gathering” — not an official meeting because some congregations didn’t accept pastors beyond certain doctrinal bounds — created a worship team as well as assigned someone, Vanessa, to arrange advertising that emphasized what Christians need to remember in the United States at Thanksgiving.
When the submissions trickled into her email, snail mail, and a couple delivered to her office, her feelings of being put upon faded. Many ideas were repeated, and some were banal, but Vanessa was amazed at what pastors thought Christians should be reminded of on Thanksgiving Day. She also enjoyed guessing from their submissions where the pastors had been raised and how they were educated.
She used the first submissions to generate a list of themes. But she waited a day beyond her announced deadline to start writing, having judged correctly that some pastors are habitually late. Because all these pastors were males, she could (but of course she wouldn’t!) judge that male pastors weren’t as good with details as females.
She’d add the information of the meeting place, musicians, and speakers after the worship team delivered those final arrangements. For now, she was pleased and excited with the ideas that came across her desk. She set out to compile and mail to all congregations a summary of the planned Thanksgiving Day worship and what Christians in the United States should recall on that day.
“First and always, we are thankful for Jesus. He teaches us to be grateful even in the worst of circumstances. We remember that on the night of his arrest he gave thanks to God for the cup and the loaf while his ministry was proving to be a failure and his life was about to end in torture and humiliation (Luke 22:17-19). The Greek word of Jesus’ thanksgiving, eucharisteo has become the name for the celebration of his last supper.
“In the early Christian church, thanksgiving was the identifying aspect of Christian life. The early church father Tertullian declared, ‘The Christian, even when condemned to die, gives thanks.’
“Our modern Thanksgiving Day celebrations, while recalling the pilgrims, forget that on our North American continent earlier Christian Thanksgiving services are reported: April 30, 1598 south of El Paso, Texas; June 30, 1564 in Saint Augustine, Florida; and December 4, 1619 at the Berkeley Plantation, Virginia.
“The best remembered and most celebrated thanksgiving of the Pilgrims occurred because they were blown off course on their way to Virginia and landed instead on Cape Cod. Of the 102 passengers aboard the Mayflower, the minority were pilgrims. The others came seeking riches in the new land. During their first winter in which nearly half died, they were kept alive by the wisdom and generosity of Native-Americans. When the suggestion of a celebration was considered in 1621, at first a service of lamentation seemed appropriate; yet, the survivors decided upon a time of thanksgiving, to which the Native-Americans brought more of the food.
“During the Revolutionary War on November 1, 1777, the Second Continental Congress issued the first thanksgiving proclamation that extended to all the colonies. President George Washington proclaimed our first national Thanksgiving Day in the United States to celebrate the formation of the newc on November 26, 1789. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln (spurred by the lobbying of Sarah Josepha Hale) proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a federal holiday and it has been so proclaimed ever since.
“As we reflect upon our nation’s Thanksgivings, we should recall that the Ku Klux Klan was rejuvenated — now not just persecuting blacks but also suppressing Roman Catholics and Jews — with a cross-burning ceremony atop Stone Mountain, Georgia, Thanksgiving Day, 1915.
“Gratitude is the basis not only of our Christian life and is a sign of healthy well-being for anyone. It’s important to remember that gratitude is expressed better by deeds than by words. The Bantu language in Africa has no word for ‘thank you,’ as was also made famous about the language of the Kwakiutl First Peoples in Canada in Margaret Craven’s novel I Heard the Owl Call My Name.”
Having collated so many different ideas and concerns from the other pastors, Vanessa couldn’t pass up the chance to add her own, “We do well this Thanksgiving to pray the old prayer, ‘For all your blessings, known and unknown, remembered and forgotten, we give you thanks O Lord,’” She was now looking forward (gratefully) to the community’s “Celebration of Thanksgiving In The Christian Life.”
Preaching point: Matters to remember and contemplate on Thanksgiving Day.
*****************************************
StoryShare, November 25, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
