Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

As Kiwi as I am, I have celebrated Thanksgiving for five years now (except last year, when I was seven months pregnant in 45 degree filipino temperatures... all I could be thankful for that year was our tinsy tiny little aircon unit!). Now I know some of you are gagging over this but please hear me out. Thankgiving is not, or rather should not, be "An American Thing". It should be a "Christian" thing.

Have a little read of this:

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...On January 1, 1795, our first United States President, George Washington, wrote his famed National Thanksgiving Proclamation, in which he says that it is…

"…our duty as a people, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge our many and great obligations to Almighty God, and to implore Him to continue is… our duty as a 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 experienced…"

Thursday, the 19th day of February, 1795 was thus set aside by George Washington as a National Day of Thanksgiving.

Many years later, on October 3, 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed, by Act of Congress, an annual National Day of Thanksgiving "on the last Thursday of November, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens." In this Thanksgiving proclamation, our 16th President says that it is…

"…announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord… But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, by the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own… It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people…"

So it is that on Thanksgiving Day each year, Americans give thanks to Almighty God for all His blessings and mercies toward us throughout the year.

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Like it or not folks, America has been one of the world's superpowers for many years. It's a free nation where people can kneel down and pray on the street if they really want to. It's also the nation that helped us beat Hitler and tends to win wars. Lincoln raises a very good point, it's the nations whose God is Jehovah that are blessed. I have talked to many ladies who have recently converted from Islam and have now permanently left Iran. They talk of the religious bondage of their people, the wicked lies that they are told to create fear (one young girl grew up believing that if she questioned the Quaran demons would pull her hair and drag her down to Hell) and the unhappiness in their country. I have seen the gross poverty and hunger in the Philippines. Truly, we are blessed! And yet Christians do not take the time to prepare one short day a year and dedicate it to thanking the Lord for all that we have been blessed with.

You know, God never asks for very much. He says, "If my people [that's us folks - not Joe Smith down the road who drinks and doesn't know any better], which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."

Our countries are floundering with gay marriage, later and later staged abortions, the removal of certain religious freedoms. God has already promised that if WE pray and realise that we need Him then He will heal our lands. A step in reaching this is acknowledging that every blessing is from Him and it is only because of our nation's Christian heritage that we are free to live such priviledged lives. Too often I think of this freedom as a right, but it's not. It really is just a priviledge, one that could disappear in the blink of an eye.

So now I've probably put you off with all my preaching ;-) But wouldn't it be wonderful if one day we could say to an Aussie or Kiwi friend, "Want to join us for Thanksgiving?" and they didn't screw their noses up and say, "What are you? American?" Instead, they could say, "Thanksgiving? What are you? Christian?"