Here is our church newsletter front page for 11/21. It sets up a motif for
worship. It also helps define the annual financial pledge process that is going on in
many churches.
From Bob Allred
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"Thanksgiving Sunday"
Our great American Thanksgiving Day, and season, is essentially an
acting out of an attitude: An attitude of gratitude. It is a great national
recognition that we have been blessed by God. Collectively we are called to
humbly recognize His handiwork.
Although the first cold Massachusetts winter had killed off half their
colony, new hope for survival grew in the summer of 1621. A bountiful corn
harvest had brought rejoicing. A new kind of bread had been developed, not
used anyplace else in the world, cornbread. There was also corn cake, geese,
duck, wild turkey, venison, and fish. Most of their new way of planting,
utilizing fish scraps for fertilizer, had been learned from the friendly
natives, mistakenly called Indians. Thus, the governor of the Plymouth
Colony decreed a three day feast, a great Thanksgiving, for the purpose of
prayer and celebration on July 30, 1623.
This annual Thanksgiving celebration spread to other New England
colonies. In 1789, our first President of this free nation issued a
proclamation naming November 26 a day of American Thanksgiving. However,
the idea was not nationally adopted until 1863, when President Lincoln
proclaimed the last Thursday in November to become "a day of thanksgiving and
praise to our beneficent Father." Each year for 75 years the President would
issue an official proclamation of Thanksgiving Day. Congress ruled in 1941
that the fourth Thursday in November would be Thanksgiving Day, and a legal
federal holiday for prayer and thanksgiving to God.
Today, Thanksgiving Day is a family time. There are more airplane seats
sold at this time than at any other time of the year. Our entire interstate
highway system is clogged with family members all trying to reach their home
places at the same time. If you have ever been forced by circumstances to be
away from your family on Thanksgiving Day, you have experienced a true
feeling of loneliness. Folks who have outlived immediate family members
reinvent their sense of family by gathering with dear friends. In a real
way, Thanksgiving Day defines family. We gather together and ask the
blessing, we say grace, thanking God for the bounty and for His promise for
continued blessings. Hardly anybody skips grace on this great day.
Our church celebrates this season with many social events and meals.
Yet, one of the most meaningful ways we recognize this season is by giving
you the opportunity of turning in your annual pledges to our budget. In
doing so we are tangibly expressing our thanks to God for what He has done,
and for what He is going to do, in showering us with blessings in the new
year. Come this Sunday, or the Sunday after Thanksgiving Day, to present
your commitment card at the Altar of God.
Bob
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Sermon for Sunday:
"Be Thankful Unto Him"
Psalm 100:4
Hymns
1. Come Ye Thankful People Come 694
2. We Gather Together 131
3. Now Thank We All Our God 102
Note: We do not have a regular Thursday Worship at our church on
Thanksgiving Day so that you might celebrate around your family table.