Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 26 verses 1 through
When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, 2you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.3You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, ‘Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.’ 4When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lordyour God, 5you shall make this response before the Lord your God: ‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.6When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labour on us, 7we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’ You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. 11Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.
It is Thanksgiving, and today is a day above all days for recounting God’s great deeds among us. It is a day for remembering God’s faithfulness.
Great is God’s faithfulness.
I hope that today amidst all the busyness of preparing the meal beforehand and then sleeping it off afterward, we all might take some time to remember how far we’ve come and good God has been to us. I hope we’ll all take some time to recount the story of God’s faithfulness to us all. Thanksgiving is a day for recounting the story.
Let me begin.
There was a day when my family would not have been possible. I descended from Mississippi slave owners who lost everything in the Civil War. And Irie descended from slaves, who though they had nothing to lose during the War had freedom to gain. Somehow, in the goodness of God’s faithfulness loving kindness, God made a way out of no way. Deliverance came, for Irie’s family, and also for mine. And with deliverance finally came the freedom to marry.
If you are looking for a sign and wonder of all that has been done in this nation, you can come eat pecan pie with us some Thanksgiving. It is the dream of Dr. King come true, the sons of slaves and and the sons of slave owners sitting together at the table of brother — the family table even.
When, amidst that dreadful Civil War, Lincoln very rightly issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation, he closed the proclamation with these words about God’s faithfulness in times past and hope for times to come:
“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, tranquillity and Union.”
The wounds of the nation are still being healed. All has not yet been healed. We have not yet arrived in our land flowing with milk and with honey. There’s still work to be done.
Nevertheless, Thanksgiving is a day for me to look around the table and see and wonder at just how far we’ve come.
Thanks be to God.
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