11/30/15

Both my undergraduate and graduate degrees were earned at Lincoln Christian University.  I was well served and have tried to serve well through the years, which have become decades! As we recently came together to another Thanksgiving, our family reflected on the following piece...Pastor Ken

    
Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done.  Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.  Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.  Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always. - 1 Chronicles 16:8-11

In 1863, during the height of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln noted the following:

"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. 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, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It has seemed to me fit and proper that [the gifts of God] should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.”      
   
Thus, a day was set aside as a reminder to acknowledge the gracious work of Almighty God.  And as a community united by the Gospel, let us humbly give thanks.                

Almighty God and Father, we praise you for  all the blessings of this life...but above all for your amazing love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, the source of grace, and our hope of glory. 

We pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to your service, and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness all our days, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, to whom be honor throughout all ages. Amen.