Thanksgiving is Thanks-living
A Reflection on History
The last word
In Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, the last word he wrote is Union. What President Lincoln sought, what he hoped for, what he prayed for was union among the peoples of America despite their differences. Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation was issued in the midst of our nation’s Civil War.
Think about the last word first.
On this Thanksgiving day, November 22, 2018, think about what brings people together. To celebrate. To eat. To see each other face-to-face. To rejoice in the freedoms enjoyed in this nation.
My Hero
Since the third grade, Abraham Lincoln remains my ideal of America’s greatest President.
Would that he could preside today over a nation fraught with differences. Some differences divide those in the same household.
From the austere height of history, Abraham Lincoln looks down on the nation he sought to preserve.
Could it be that we are as divided now as then, in the midst of America’s Civil War?
I wonder.
Maybe not in armed combat, but certainly amidst wars of words. Shots fired from the shadows take aim at people who disagree. On everything from religion, to race, to gender, to politics and social constructs. Moral and ethical issues. To how to fight wars on drugs, on poverty, on discrimination, on prejudice and hate.
May God have mercy on us all.
Giving thanks in the midst of turbulent times
Since 1863, the fourth Thursday of November remains set apart as a national holiday.
More men died in the Civil War than any other American conflict, and two-thirds of the dead perished from disease.
Approximately 625,000 men died in the Civil War, more Americans than in World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. If the names of the Civil War dead were arranged like the names on the Vietnam Memorial, it would stretch over 10 times the wall’s length. Two percent of the population died, the equivalent of 6 million men today. Rifles were by far the war’s deadliest weapons, but deadlier still was disease. In 1861, as armies massed, men once protected from contagion by isolation marched shoulder to shoulder and slept side by side in unventilated tents. Camps became breeding grounds for childhood diseases such as mumps, chicken pox and measles. One million Union soldiers contracted malaria, and epidemics were common. https://www.history.com/news/10-surprising-civil-war-facts
The first words of Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation read:
The year that is drawing toward 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 even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
I cannot stop thinking about Who to thank.
