Last Sunday afternoon, as the sun settled low in the sky, and a cold wind blew, my granddaughter and I went for a solitary walk down Sunken Road in Fredericksburg. The only sounds were of the wind, the crunch of stroller wheels on the gravel, and the skitter of leaves, which were blowing in small whirlwinds around my feet.
As I looked at the only remaining segment of the stone wall along the Sunken Road where the Confederates had held the line against advancing Union forces, I had trouble imagining, in the twilight peace of that place, the fierce battle that had raged there so many years ago. As I breathed in the fresh cold fall air, I thought with sorrow that the air here had been full of the smell of blood and death, and the quiet ground where I walked had been littered with bodies of the dead and the dying.
In those horrible times, President Abraham Lincoln declared a day of Thanksgiving, a day on which Americans would ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.”
Lincoln saw the truth in offering prayers for a suffering people and a suffering nation on a day of Thanksgiving.
Coming before God in our grief and sorrow, or in our need, aware of the blessings that we currently have, as small as they may seem to be, aware of the blessings we’ve experienced in the past, and looking forward to the blessings we hope for in the future, then puts our needs, be they small or great, into the perspective of time and eternity. This sort of prayer, based in praise and thanksgiving to God, reminds us Christians that God is good, God’s mercy is everlasting, and God’s truth endures from generation to generation.
Beginning all prayer with praise and thanksgiving empowers us.
The portion of today’s psalm lists the things that God has done, and then goes on to point out what the earth itself does in response to God’s gracious blessing on it.
The wagon tracks overflow with richness. The pastures of the wilderness overflow, and the hills gird themselves with joy. The meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, and all shout and sing together for joy.
God’s abundant blessings in our lives empower us, even in the face of chaos brought on by a disordered society, or the ravages of disease, or even death, to be light and hope and constancy and strength when everything is dark and falling apart around us.
So today, no matter where you are in your life, comfortable and secure, or wandering in some wilderness, consider your blessings.
And then do not hesitate to bring your needs to God.
Because our God is the same God that led our ancestors in faith for forty years in the wilderness, who fed them with manna, bread from heaven,
And then brought them into a good land, a land of abundance, where they lacked nothing.
And so we thankful people have come today to “raise the song of harvest home,” to give thanks, and to live our lives in praise and thanksgiving, while we look in hope for the day in which the Lord will come, and bring us home, where we will abide with one another in that blessed abundant place of joy and thanksgiving in God’s presence forever. Amen.