Today's Daily Lesson in observance of Thanksgiving in America is from Matthew chapter 6 verses 25 through 33:
6:25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
6:26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
6:27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?
6:28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin,
6:29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.
6:30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you--you of little faith?
6:31 Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?'
6:32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
6:33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
We observe Thanksgiving today in the midst of much worry and troubles and also consolations.
A friend and colleague lost her son to gun violence this week. Another friend was assaulted at gun point.
A friend is awaiting health news about herself and also her mother. Another friend's little child will undergo brain surgery tomorrow.
A verdict of innocent. Three verdicts of guilty. A video released of one man killing another in an altercation on a front porch. Guilty? Innocent? Either way, the gun manufacturers are never held accountable.
But the drug dispensers have been this week.
So much to worry about. So much to fret over. So much still to come. The Insurrection has not ended. As Phillips Brooks said in his eulogy for Lincoln, slavery was the "sacrament" of evil -- an outward and visible sign -- which Michelle Alexander says shape-shifted to Jim Crow, then Mass Incarceration, and now what? Next what?
We can worry and fret. And we will.
But today my folks are alive, my sister is well, my wife and children are a manifold blessing, and the church folks are decent and generous and act in a lot of important ways like real Christians. And a bird is starting a chorus outside my window.
Today is a day for giving thanks. As Lincoln said in his Thanksgiving Proclamation, issued even amidst all the death and devastation of the Civil War:
"The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God."
The old broken down alcoholic honkey-tonker turned half-decent man played by Robert Duvall in the movie Tender Mercies said, "I don't trust happiness."
I don't trust happiness much either. Providence, however, has pierced the armor.
And I am grateful.
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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