daily java

Daily Java: So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.  (Colossians 2:6-7)

It is Thanksgiving. A lot of memories around this day, as is the case with most Americans.

I remember in school the emphasis on the origin of the day. Pilgrims had gone through a rough winter and had a good harvest so they invited the Indians to come and have dinner with them. The picture was that of a long table with a few Pilgrims, white people in tall black hats and bonnets on one side and a few Indians with feathers and breech clouts on the other, all of them eating turkey and corn and stuff.

The reality was very different, of course. The Pilgrims, thinking they had come to a new land of plenty almost starved that first winter. I have read that they just didn’t realize the severity of a New England winter and lost almost 2/3 of their colony to exposure and starvation. They came, after all, from England where it is a Seattle style climate: never really hot or really cold.

The Indians evidently helped them through it and they had some kind of common meal to show appreciation.

We did that scene on each Thanksgiving as a play. One year, I remember I played the governor of the group, I forget his name. The Indians wore construction paper feathers and the Pilgrims wore construction paper hats and bonnets. It was always a bit strange – the whole concept of the first Thanksgiving – but it was always fun.

And it helped to cement the idea of Thanksgiving being not just food but the realization of others helping us survive and being grateful to God for what we had.

Of course, there were the myriad Thanksgivings that I had growing up, always with relatives somewhere with tables groaning with food. The Thanksgiving I spent away from my family in Germany in the army, the Thanksgiving I spent away from my wife and children while I was being a fool. Simple Thanksgivings with just my family and raucous Thanksgivings with everybody else.  

In this passage, the apostle Paul says that if Jesus is running through us and moving through us, we are not only strengthened but made aware of gratitude.

Because of the removal of religion from the schools, our children do not have that same idea of gratitude. The popular convention now is the white people coming to America and oppressing the Indians and Thanksgiving gets overshadowed by foolish political concerns.

It is the same way in the upcoming Christmas season. This whole generation does not know the great Christmas carols that we learned in school and sang each year.

Much of our culture is being lost because of our lack of gratitude and common sense.

Thanksgiving has to be a great part of our makeup as Christians or we are not really Christians. Even Jesus was thankful to God in many of his comments and prayers. He knew what his source was. He knew it was only through the power of God that we have anything at all.

I thank you Lord, for all you have given me. My family, my wife, my life in your service, for making me a minister of your gospel, for giving me two good children, for my and my wife’s parents who raised us up in your knowledge and your word, for all of those things that I take so much for granted. I thank you. I thank you for your grace and your love and for your forgiveness and acceptance. I thank you, Lord. Amen.