"Give thanks to the Lord for He is good,
His love endures forever."
(Psalm 107:1)
Dear Friends ~
The most popular holiday in the U.S. for families to get together is Thanksgiving Day. Airlines are swamped and in the areas were hard winter hasn’t taken over the roads, everyone tries to 
get to Grandma’s house for that scrumptious banquet. A day to Give Thanks: to Almighty God heartfelt appreciation for the bounty of life; to our parents the gratitude for rearing us to adulthood; to siblings and spouses the joy of family love; and to all the unrelated but oh so special friends and neighbors that feel like family, thankfulness for friendship for they add so much to our daily existence. The aroma of roasting turkey and cooling pumpkin pies hits you smack in the face as you walk through the front door, and several tables are laid out with the best china and fall décor… it’s all so gorgeous… loving warmth is in the air… and we all like that! Children are occupied at their own table with activities, fathers have a football game or two to watch, and all the women are in the kitchen putting together the delectable dishes that will make everyone moan: “I ate too much!” After dinner, some will try to walk off the rapacious gorging, while others will just give into the tryptophan and take a nap!
Whether the gathering is few or many, it is absolutely necessary to go around the table giving each one the opportunity to declare what they are most thankful for. Small children will get their first lesson in being grateful for things other than toys; others will be emboldened by the love in the air to declare their affection for family they rarely utter at any other time; and some will bite
their tongue and play nice to those they don’t like because the day calls for civility in large families were history has hurt. Most with good manners will try to avoid topics like politics to stave off split feelings in known differences and always the peacemaker in the crowd will try and bring about reconciliations… it is too short a life to hold grudges and the atmosphere is conducive to opening minds and hearts.
Everyone will return home with a feeling of worth, and that belonging to family really matters even if it requires hard effort at times. Hopefully, everyone will acknowledge openly or at least to their inner self, that everything that’s important to them came from Almighty God. The beauty and provisions of our natural world, The Father created to meet our every need; physically or spiritually whatever we enjoy it all started from The Creator’s Love for us. You wake to a gorgeous sunrise that sets just the right tone for your day or you hear the affectionate morning greeting from a loved one that lifts your spirit… natural beauty to mesmerize your vision or supernatural virtue in another that only God can instill for its benefit that satiates your soul. The true Christian knows the source for any success they have had in life came about through the handiwork of God, directly through prayers answered or indirectly by the ever vigilant 
Father guiding every moment of our existence. Of all the possibilities that life may offer us, many times the choices can be very difficult and so we ask His help… The all-knowing, The all-powerful, The all-loving God comes to our aid more times than we ever realize… and so we say “Thank God!” recognizing Divine Intervention suddenly and spontaneously. One Thursday a year we say it publicly with family and friends on Thanksgiving Day, but every day of the year we should say it privately to Him… that’s all He wants from us, a personal relationship of love and gratitude.
"I am grateful for what I am and have.
My Thanksgiving is perpetual."
David Thoreau
A child of God’s is grateful first of all, for just having a God… a Father in heaven who loves and cares for us… and as horrible as life can get at times, when we need Him the most, He’s there. Thank God always, just for being.
HOLIDAY OR HOLYDAY?
Thanks to the government, not the church hierarchy, most people get a four-day weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving… Thanksgiving to God was the original intent of President George Washington’s Proclamation of 1789 as a day for acknowledging God… but how many people nowadays realize and honor that declaration as a national belief? It is certainly not the overwhelming majority that it was during this nation’s formation and isn’t that sad… how
far far away from the tree the apple has fallen, so far that it’s hardly distinguishable as the fruit of the original genus! Be amazed as you read the following excerpt from George’s proclamation, that such a belief could even be uttered and passed by any of our current legislative bodies… it wouldn’t be the politically correct thing to do… and political suicide would occur for anyone suggesting the imposition of such a decree.
…Whereas both Houses of Congress have requested me to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God…
[That day] to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country…
and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us…to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.
Abraham Lincoln continued these same thoughts when he declared the observance to be an annual event in 1863, and his chastising remarks of then, are extremely apropos to our growing secular culture of today.
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It has seemed to me fit and proper that the gifts of God should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore… set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.
The current state of religious affairs in our society is one of disarray, for at no other time in this countries history has it been so unfavorable to be a Christian… in fact, ridiculing a belief in God is a legitimate livelihood for some… and we believers allow it becoming more and more a minority group by letting the disgusting non-believers spew such hatred. Efforts have been successful in many school districts across America to remove from textbooks the admission of Thankfulness by the pilgrims to Almighty God, for a much more sterilized version of history… something 
the secular and evil forces of stupidity want to do in many areas of our past history; to change that history because it’s not NOW the way to believe, in their idiotic thinking… but they are so wrong. The devilish forces that try to eradicate every positive and negative bit of history to reflect the secular humanism so popular today have only generated a godless society where every neighborhood exists in disgraceful turmoil, without God’s graces. Lincoln saw that beginning in his day… we have forgotten God… we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own… (That’s the definition of humanism!)… we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace… the gifts of God should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.
This country, like many around the world, needs to reflect back to the true beginning of creation which was God-made, not man-made. The more we think we can do it on our own, the more hideous we become; we have strayed so far from the Paradisiacal existence God had in mind, all because of evolving sin. Deliberate evil dominates our lives… you are a fool if you can’t see that. For the love of God, work to bring back a world were virtue not vice dominates our lives… where belief in God is a respected and a paramount ideal… where everyone says, "Thank You God” every day of the year!
