Happy Thanksgiving Day

To all my friends and readers in the USA, – have a very happy and pleasant Thanksgiving.

When Janette and I moved into the Albert Bridge Congregational Church manse around nine years ago, there was a framed print on the wall of one of the rooms. It depicted the First Thanksgiving, and was an idyllic scene, with ships anchored in a bay, and on shore, Pilgrims and native Americans joined together, seated around tables, enjoying their thanksgiving meal, praising God for His goodness.

Now, I don’t know how historically accurate (or politically correct!) that image was, but it certainly served as a reminder of the faithfulness, tenacity and vision of our Congregational and Independent forefathers, whose desire to escape the strictures of Anglicanism, and to make a new life in a new land, led to the foundation of a great nation. Later events within American Congregationalism may have marred that vision somewhat, when in some areas the Congregational Churches became almost as oppressive as the systems they had fled from, and as liberalism took hold in the churches.

But we should thank God as they did, as we look back and see his guiding hand and his preserving grace upon our lives and upon our nations, and we thank him for his longsuffering with us as our separate nations and states continue, by and large, to neglect his word and reject his ways.

To those who will celebrate Thanksgiving today, may God be with you, and may you truly experience his grace, love and peace.

1 Cor 1:4-5 I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ; That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge.