Commentary

As we gather in our homes with friends and family on this day of remembrance – we ask the Lord’s blessing on your family, our state and nation.

This is a day to bring to mind all the blessings God has bestowed upon us as individuals and as a nation. While the present cultural confusion gives us reason for anxiety – we do well this day to look over America’s long history, to the vision of our dependence upon God’s merciful intervention in the affairs of men.  On this day, we ask that you join with us in thanking Almighty God for His mercy in granting us a president and vice-president who humbly appreciate the Gift of Life and the many blessings which He has granted to America.  May the Lord send them protection, wisdom and encouragement.

Here are a few excerpts from Thanksgiving Proclamations issued by statesmen in nobler times:

“[It is] our duty as people, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge our many and great obligations to Almighty God and to implore Him to continue and confirm the blessings we experience.”

• President George Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1795

“I have thought fit, according to the ancient and laudable practice of our renowned ancestors, to appoint a day of Public Thanksgiving to God, for the great benefits which He has been pleased to bestow upon us, in the year past.”

• Governor Samuel Adams, 1795

“No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy….I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States … to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer to our beneficent Father, who dwelleth in the heavens.  And I recommend to them that … [they] 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.”

• President Abraham Lincoln, 1863

“May we on that [Day of Thanksgiving] in our churches and in our homes give humble thanks for the blessings bestowed upon us during the year past by Almighty God.”

• President Franklin Roosevelt, 1933