Thanksgiving then and now

As Thanksgiving Day draws near, many of us may recall the story of that first Thanksgiving in America. As the pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe sat down to their feast, they gave thanks for all they had been given and overcame the previous year. Celebrating this holiday and recalling their experience invites us to be grateful for all we have received. 

The families and leaders who participated in the first Thanksgiving had faced huge challenges as new families arrived in America. Indigenous peoples introduced pilgrims to native crops and taught them farming and hunting skills to help them establish their families in the new land.

Despite these challenges, they gave thanks for what was given to them.

Only with the help of the native peoples who surrounded them did the pilgrims survive. They had first dismissed their neighbors as pagan and hostile; eventually they admitted that the hand of God was at work among them. As it turned out, God was bigger than their imagination.

The pilgrims also gave thanks for how they had been guided into a new kind of life. The reason for their gratitude was God’s graciousness. Despite the deprivations they had experienced, they knew the wealth and fruitfulness of this new land was incomparable. Most of the suffering they had endured had been the result of their ignorance rather than the insufficiency of the land or the lack of nature’s bounty. They were grateful to have been wrong. The pilgrims at this first Thanksgiving were, indeed, blessed.

All these lessons are still in place for us today. While we make our way through the wilderness of our time, we should take stock and acknowledge our debt of gratitude. We have to be willing to learn to acknowledge our blessings and give thanks if we are to become a “City on a Hill” in our generation.

Like those who came before us, we must become more attuned to our environment with both the opportunities and threats, specifically in this digital age. If we want our society to thrive in the rough country around us, we must listen to what’s being said and, at times, learn to ignore. 

Like our forebears, we can find it difficult to think about more than one thing at a time. Thinking about our choices and deliberating about our future, we can be enamored of simple solutions. We often prefer our choices to be “yes” or “no,” and nothing else. But, complicated situations produce complicated analyses and intricate solutions.

If we are to follow the example of our ancestors, we are challenged to discover how to survive in a world made by harsh choices and intricate problems. 

For example, we’re now facing the breakdown of a shared understanding of common society. We are unable to agree on what our life together ought to look like. (Consider the polarization evident throughout the recent campaign season and election.) 

As we begin to analyze the problems we face, including the increasing tragedy of homelessness, we find there are no simple solutions, but we must resist presuming there are no solutions at all. We face many other seemingly insurmountable challenges in our society, but we cannot escape the challenge to address them.

When our ancestors were able to look around at what challenged them, they began to respond. There was no easy way to the life they wanted until they were willing to find it. 
Our American identity is built on our willingness to pursue what is right and do what others have felt unable to do. And because we know the answer to our needs comes through God’s beneficence and loving providence, we know our first response is to give thanks. 

The world we face is not our parents’ or our grandparents’ wilderness, but ours. The gift of living at this time is ours. It invites us to give thanks for our own blessings here and now.
We are not huddled among the forests of New England in 1621. But, we are invited to stare into the world that we face and find a way to prosper. It’s not always easy, but we know God will not abandon us. 

God is with us, and so we confidently give thanks.