At last count over 200 people had signed up for the Honey Lake Resort and Spa Thanksgiving Day Dinner including my family. I was surprised that so many eat out on this holiday of traditions that includes turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, giblet gravy, pumpkin pie and other various and sundry trimmings, but I suppose moms and grandmas like a day off now and then too.
Thanksgiving Day also reminds some folks of football games, perhaps a game of golf, and those like me enjoy some early morning and late afternoon deer or quail hunting too. My sons and I spent many a turkey day eating at the Huddle House as we fanatically deer hunted through the holiday weekend, but now I much prefer to be at home with family, (this is not to say that I don’t sneak out right before daylight and sit on a deer stand for a while as the rest of the family snoozes).
The Pilgrims reached America in 1620. That first winter, many of those first settlers died. Fortunately, the next harvest was quite substantial and called for a celebration. Tradition maintains that the event included 91 Indians who’d helped thirteen Pilgrims narrowly survive the harsh New England winter.
That first Thanksgiving Day feast was initially established as a celebration and as a thanksgiving to God for His many blessings in helping them to safely come to the new world and establish their new homes and survive the difficult conditions.
For sure their first dinner did not even remotely resemble the Honey Lake Thanksgiving feast. Their dinner lasted for three full days and modern dishes like mashed potatoes, dressing, and cranberry sauce, served on fine china were not on the table, but there were plenty of dried cod, eels, mussels, wild turkeys, Guinea fowl, clams, beetroot, wild onions, maize, squash, venison, duck, swans, and goose, berries, grains, and maybe some fruit including pumpkins and perhaps in addition to spring water there was even some home brew and/or wine.
They played games and exhibited shooting skills, the Indians with their bows and the pilgrims with their muskets, but there were no college or NFL games on big screen TV’s and no comfortable couches to fall asleep on while watching the games and digesting massive amounts of food. And there were no “Black Friday” shopping sprees to the local malls.
It is refreshing to me that the pilgrims saw fit to set aside a day of Thanksgiving for something they deemed to be “blessings from God almighty”. Many in today’s society would not view their situation as one of being blessed, rather one of bleak and austere circumstance, and extreme poverty. Today many in this nanny state society of entitlement who found themselves in similar dire straits would shake their fist at God and those wealthy greedy capitalists who they blame for not taking better care of them, and march down the dirt roads to the community square, urinate and defecate in the street, display nasty signs as they formed marches, and fight with the authorities for what they deem as society and God treating them shabbily.
Our nation’s settlers did not look at it like that at all. They were very thankful to God for everything He’d given them. It is the essence of what I think we should feel on Thanksgiving Day regardless of our circumstance.
We should put Jesus first in our lives and next would come others, and both should go before us. It’s straight out of the Bible and a perfect Thanksgiving Day message and a perfect way to ultimately find joy in our lives.
Did you know that it is estimated that 1/3 of the people on this planet have never used a telephone? Most of them don’t have electricity or clean running water. I visited India and was told that hundreds of millions of people survive there on less than one penny per day; many children there and around the world are literally starving to death every day. Arab countries routinely persecute Christians and martyr them for even owning a Bible and certainly for sharing the Gospel with others.
How it must grieve God to look at this blessed land and see so many ignore His blessings and really not even give Him a thought as they head out for their latest protest, the golf course, or malls. It is no great surprise to see Him sadly turn His back on this once great land and withdraw the blessings that have made it prosper, because so many of our citizens, (now a majority), have done so to Him.
Don’t be one of them. Find a quiet place somewhere and get down on your knees sometime this weekend and spend some quality time thanking Jesus for all that He has blessed you and your family with. Keep it in perspective with a world view. If you visit Honey Lake be sure and stop by our drop dead gorgeous church and spend some quiet time inside or out reflecting on how God has blessed you and your family in spite of a few trials and tribulations that go along with it. Also remember others who are less fortunate and cannot afford a turkey or even pay their light bill.
Can you help anyone out this weekend? Most of us have the means to do so if we would only spend some time on it. I’m providing Thanksgiving Dinner at Honey Lake to some needy folks and myriads of others are serving meals to the hungry and homeless at shelters all over this land. Go visit a friend in the hospital or in assisted living – My Dad will spend his Thanksgiving there. It grieves me for him to be away from family on this blessed day; I wish he wasn’t so far from my home.
Hey, put yourself on the back burner for a couple of hours and see if the Spirit of God doesn’t stir your mind and soul and bless your lives. Share in His rest over this weekend and put some JOY and LOVE in your heart by thanking God for your blessings and help someone in need over the holidays.
Yes take some time for yourself and by all means enjoy your family, celebrate your good fortune to be blessed to live in this great land, (in spite of her difficult problems), and most importantly do engage in the double stuffing – Stuff your turkey and then stuff yourself silly. Diets can wait!
Gobble – Gobble!
Acts 20:35
In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’