This week we celebrated Thanksgiving
This week as we celebrate Thanksgiving I am reminded of people who met in mutual respect and harmony. At least initially. Men, and women who were fleeing a place of persecution and oppression seeking a new life and freedom in a strange land. I recalled that the first two generations or 50 years the Peoples of this new world and its new arrivals lived in harmony and there was great appreciation for helping the new comers to survive. As people sought a new life, and this initial spirit of welcome of the immigrant, those seeking Asylum was well received.
We live in a time when we need to see Thanksgiving as a reminder of who we are called to be as a nation. The scriptures filled our hearts with praise and thanks to God for his mighty work in our lives. Oh how every step of the way God is present. Leading us guiding us providing for us. Those first arrivals to this land would not have made it without the help of the native peoples and the hand of the Lord. They knew that and they honored it.
We gathered around meals as family to give thanks and we truly have much to give thanks for as individuals and as families, church and nation. We give praise to God that even in the midst of our being unsure and doubting what tomorrow might bring, we are greatful because we know who has our tomorrow in His hands.
” I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and 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 Thanksgiving Address
As we turn to the celebration of Christ the King, His Kingship, direction and authority over our lives is what gives us the ability and hope to face tomorrow. We turn to Jesus Christ our Lord and King the Savior of the universe recognizing His Lordship not only over us but over all of the world. We stand with firm hope and faith in the one who brought forth very life itself and invited us to share in His Divine and Royal life. As we celebrate Christ as King, we also recall our baptism into His divine power as we with him are anointed priest Prophet and King. He invites us into the Divine Life and places the very authority He has over our lives. We speak, step and walk in the Authority of Chirst Jesus our Lord and King.