May the God of the universe, the Lord who made heaven and earth and everything in it, give us all hearts filled with thanksgiving today and every day.  He has abundantly blessed us, so we have a duty to give Him thanks.  Many among us will soon be enjoying a holiday, American style, with great food, family and football.  Sometimes people think America invented Thanksgiving, but God's people have been giving thanks since the very beginning.

          Cain and Abel, the children of Adam and Eve, gave thanks to God for their harvest.  Abraham gave thanks for his firstborn son.  Jacob gave thanks when he found Joseph alive, and here David gives God thanks for offerings that will help them build the first Temple to Yahweh.

          Historians tell us the first Thanksgiving was not at all the happy occasion we have been lead to think it was, with turkey, roasted corn and smiles all around.  Elementary students are taught the first Thanksgiving was the Europeans giving thanks to the Indians.  The most recent issue of "Smithsonian" magazine paints the picture of a meal built on invasion, slavery and oppression.  The article depicts Native Americans as winsome happy folks with a gentle and prosperous culture, while European invaders were the unkempt, dirty and greedy, taking advantage of the Natives' good nature.  The article says about the only thing they brought to the first Thanksgiving was disease and death.  The truth, of course, is somewhere in between the two extremes.

          Whatever the case, the autumn of 1621 marks the beginning of our tradition of an annual Day of Thanksgiving.  President Lincoln made the date official in 1864.  Amid the horrors of the American Civil War, this remarkable man decided the people of our country needed a special day to give thanks to God.  Today, despite the fact that God is being all but eradicated from from the public square, we [thankfully] still have Thanksgiving.  They haven't yet taken away this holiday on which we pay homage and thanks to God for all He has done for us.

          In our version of the Lord's Prayer, we conclude with the words, "For thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever and ever, amen."  In my classes I usually raise some eyebrows by saying Jesus never spoke those words.  The original Lord's Prayer ended with the words, "But deliver us from the evil one." (Matthew 6:13)   Somewhere in the early church, when formal worship prayers were spoken only by the priest, the people were invited to respond with what we call the doxology, or "words of praise."  And some Christians, myself included, believe the doxology to the Lord's Prayer is based on the words of David in 1 Chronicles 29.

          Here David gave God a song of thanksgiving for success and generosity.  He and his son Solomon were told to build a permanent house of God to replace the tabernacle, the tent the Israelites had been using since their years of wandering in the Wilderness.  Moses had built them a temporary structure for forty years that had become permanent for nearly six hundred years.  Things have a way of doing that in the church; a quick fix becomes permanent; a tent becomes a fixture; a modular becomes part of the Master Plan.

          But David knew those days had to end, and that a permanent Temple was needed.  God told him he wouldn't build it, but his son would.  He was a man of war, and so God's house would be built by a man of peace.  But David embarked on the task of raising funds to provide a new place where God would be worshipped.  And after a successful capital campaign, David gathered the people and gave his song of thanksgiving:  "Praise be to you, O LORD, God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.  Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours.  Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.  Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things.  In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all.  Now, our God, we give you thanks, and praise your glorious name."

          Interestingly, the Temple only lasted about four centuries.  The temporary tabernacle had been used nearly six centuries, but the permanent Temple was destroyed by invaders after barely 400 years of use.  Most church buildings these days can't make it even one century.

          But what a song of thanksgiving from a great king!  Here David praised God, not himself or his people.  He knew they were nothing without God.  He knew God had made the Israelites what they were.  A pastor does not make a congregation, only God does.  It's nice recognition to compliment a leader on the success of the church, but the real success belongs to all the people, and especially to the Lord.  "Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours."

          God is the one who makes all things work.  We are His servants, His workers.  He provides for our needs.  David continues, "Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.  Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things.  In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all."  The church is nothing without God's blessing.  Wealth and honor come from Him.  From His hands come all that we are and have.  That is why David prays, "Now, our God, we give you thanks, and praise your glorious name."

          It's a fitting thing to tell God, because it's the truth.  It's a fitting way to acknowledge what God has done for us.  He has all the wealth, but gives some of it to us.  He has all the power and strength, but He shares some of it with us.  He is the head over all, the ruler of all things, and He gives to all as He sees fit.  Thus, David gave thanks to God for all good things from the Lord.  And he is calling on his people to do the same.

          What will your song of thanksgiving this year?  Soon we'll be invited to write ours down, and what will yours be?  Sometimes blessings are mixed.  The same thing can be wonderful and cause problems.  We live in an age of so much information, but our many choices don't make life easy.  The Internet, for example, gives us so much information, so many facts to help us with health, religion, government, history.  In moments the world is at our fingertips.

          But it also brings us much that can harm us - images and instructions that destroy rather than build up, things that weaken minds of rather than strengthen them.  The same tool that helps us keep in touch, also keeps criminals in touch.  For years people dreamed of such a source of information, and now we have our wish, but are we better for it?  It's almost like James once wrote, "Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing.  My brothers, this should not be." (James 3:10)   May God lead us to use this gift wisely.

         An old man visited an old broken pier on the eastern seacoast of Florida.  Every Friday night, until his death in 1973, he returned, walking slowly and slightly stooped with a large bucket of shrimp.  The sea gulls would flock to him, and he fed them from his bucket.  Many years before, in October, 1942, a much younger man was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea.  But somewhere over the South Pacific his Flying Fortress became so damaged that he and his men had to ditch their plane in the ocean.  For nearly a month this soldier and his companions fought waves, weather, and scorching sun.  They spent sleepless nights as sharks rammed their small rafts.  The largest raft was nine feet by five.  The biggest shark, ten feet long.

         But their greatest enemy was starvation.  Eight days out, their rations were long gone, and starvation looked them all in the face.  But then a miracle occurred.  The Captain had read a short worship service that afternoon, and finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise.  They all just settled down to doze in the oppressive heat.  Their hats were pulled down for protection, when something landed on the Captain's head - a sea gull.  No one said a word, but there on his head stood a sea gull, and it was food.

         They caught the gull, almost too easily.  It just sat there till someone grabbed it.  Its flesh was eaten.  Its insides were used for bait to catch fish, and their lives were saved because a lone sea gull, hundreds of miles from land, offered itself to them as a sacrifice.  They had prayed for deliverance and God gave them a single seagull.  He was Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, the flying ace of WWI, Medal of Honor winner, and he and his comrades made it safely home.  Only one life was lost.  And he never forgot, because every Friday evening for over a decade, at about sunset, on an eastern Florida seacoast, you could see an old man walking, white-haired, slightly bent, his bucket filled with shrimp to feed the gulls.  And there he remembered that one lone bird, on a day long past, that gave itself to them without a struggle, like manna and quail in the wilderness that fed the children of Israel.

          Jesus Christ gave Himself for us, the innocent for the guilty.  He let them crucify Him because they needed to be rescued.  The world was starving and lost until this man from God settled among them, taught them God's truth, and was put to death.  The miracle was that He came alive again, and all who trust Him will never die, but have eternal life.

          So let us celebrate Thanksgiving once again.  Let us give Him our song of thanksgiving for all He has given us.  And may we do so every day, or at least once a week, a time in which we remember His sacrifice, and the life He has given us all.  Amen!

Copyright © 2005 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.