The Endurance of Thanksgiving
Dear Friends in Christ,
As long as there has been a Thanksgiving Day, the Episcopal Church has been celebrating it. Thanksgiving is one of the major feasts of our calendar and has been so since the first American Prayer book of 1789.
It’s not always simple to give thanks.
The first national declaration of Thanksgiving was issued by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, in the depth of the Civil War. Grace Church (in its former building on South Patrick Street) had been taken over as a field hospital for Union troops. The country was tearing itself apart over entrenched political and moral differences.
Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation ended this way:
I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience . . . fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.
We are not in a civil war. But we are nonetheless in a moment of entrenched political and moral differences, and we risk tearing one another part. It has left many of us exhausted and afraid.
In his moment, Lincoln invited both reliance on God and gratitude for divine care. Just when life was most difficult, Lincoln asked for his country to be thankful.
Thanksgiving is no more simple now than it was then. But it is just as essential. Seeing, naming, and celebrating the providence of God opens our hearts like little else. When we know that God is good, we trust that God will continue to be good, and we are not afraid.
I hope that you will come to Grace Church on Thanksgiving Day. We gather for eucharist at 10:00 a.m. Of all the blessings given to us, the gift of God’s son is the greatest. Sharing the body of Christ, broken for us, put all gratitude in its rightful context. It makes us strong, and it makes us brave.
May your holiday be filled with blessing.
Yours in Christ,
Anne+