Today around the US families gather together as they wish and as they can to share a meal, to share some time, to just be with one another. The business of life gives way to a softer, slower pace of relaxation of just being with one another.
This is the true gift of thanksgivng, we learn once again to be with and be for one another rather than constantly doing this or doing that.
The art of just being has slipped through our calloused hands and scarred hearts and worped minds.
Today we rediscovery what makes life so grand, learning again to say "thank you" but not just with words but with our very presence, with our very life. For isn't the attempt to gather togther an action of thanksgiving!
As we enter into this moment on this time space continuum we call life, another look at the proclamation from President Abraham Lincoln is in order:
"It has seemed to me fit and proper that they (blessings bestowed) should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledge 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 those who are in foreing 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..."
but He continues and this is also an important part
"And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings thay do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the ALmighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union."
Today we offer thanksgiving and praise while offering humble pentinece for our perverseness...Quite a mixture this day makes...Thanks and praise and penitence...
Such is life, such is necessary in this fallen world where sin and grace vie for our human heart: grace demands thanks and praise and sinfulness beckons for penitence and only togther do we move forward and seek to make changes in our life so that God may truly be all in all.
One eye on grace and the other on our sinfilness and thus we shall truly behold the Hand of God that holds us firm and give us reason to "stand erect and rais eour heads, for our redemption is at hand."
If we lose sight of grace then we despair for our sins; if we lose sight of our sins than we live a life no longer in need of God's healing touch, only with both can we truly make progress on the journey of life: thanks, praise, and penitence.
No comments:
Post a Comment