Back during the dark days of 1929, a group of ministers in the Northeast,
all graduates of the Boston School of Theology, gathered to discuss how they
should conduct their Thanksgiving Sunday services. Things were about as bad
as they could get, with no sign of relief. The bread lines were depressingly
long, the stock market had plummeted, and the term Great Depression seemed
an apt description for the mood of the country. The ministers thought they
should only lightly touch upon the subject Thanksgiving in deference to the
human misery all about them. After all, there was to be thankful for. But it
was Dr. William L. Stiger, pastor of a large congregation in the city that
rallied the group. This was not the time, he suggested, to give mere passing
mention to Thanksgiving, just the opposite. This was the time for the nation
to get matters in perspective and thank God for blessings always present,
but perhaps suppressed due to intense hardship.
I suggest to you the ministers struck upon something. The most intense
moments of thankfulness are not found in times of plenty, but when
difficulties abound. Think of the Pilgrims that first Thanksgiving. Half
their number dead, men without a country, but still there was thanksgiving
to God. Their gratitude was not for something but in something. It was that
same sense of gratitude that lead Abraham Lincoln to formally establish the
first Thanksgiving Day in the midst of national civil war, when the butcher'
s list of casualties seemed to have no end and the very nation struggled for
survival.
Perhaps in your own life, right now, intense hardship. You are experiencing
your own personal Great Depression. Why should you be thankful this day? May
I suggest three things?
1. We must learn to be thankful or we become bitter.
2. We must learn to be thankful or we will become discouraged.
3. We must learn to be thankful or we shall surly grow arrogant and
self-satisfied.
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