Welcome to Hank’s Place
Thanksgiving Day is a few days away – my good friend Nate Krupp of Salem Oregon sent out a reminder of the Thanksgiving Story – a story well worth remembering. With thanks to Nate, here is that story.
The Pilgrims were a godly people who left the Church of England to start something they considered more simple and more biblical. They left Plymouth, England, on August 5, 1620, on the Mayflower ship enroute to an English colony in today’s Virginia, in search of religious and political freedom. They were blown off course to today’s Cape Cod Bay on the East Coast of Massachusetts. Before disembarking on November 21, they drew up the Mayflower Compact, which was the first time in history that free and equal men voluntarily, in writing, covenanted with GOD and each other to create their own civil government. FIRST TIME in history!
On shore, they discovered 20 acres that were already cleared and ready for planting! Nevertheless, 44% of their number died that first winter. In March, an Indian chief, Samoset, appeared and greeted them – in English. He explained that the land had been cleared by a warring tribe, the Patuxets, before they had all died from a mysterious plague four years earlier. He returned a week later with Squanto, who had lived in Spain and England for nine years, where he had learned English, and had just returned from England six months earlier. He stayed with the Pilgrims and taught them how to fish, hunt, plant, etc., and greatly increased their chances of survival. Samoset and Squanto introduced the Pilgrims to Massasoit, the chief who controlled the entire area and with whom a peace treaty was arranged. In October the Pilgrims invited the Indians for a time of celebration and THANKSGIVING TO GOD, which lasted three days.
In 1789 President George Washington proclaimed November 26 as a day of national thanksgiving. President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November, 1863, as “a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father.” In 1941 Congress ruled that the fourth Thursday of November would be observed as Thanksgiving Day.
Today, I encourage YOU to take time to give thanks to GOD – for His mercies, lovingkindness, His son Jesus our Savior – for your salvation and for ordaining America as God’s covenanted nation. Thank Him for His hand yet upon America — He’s not done with America although dark clouds swirl about, or US. Give thanks —and COME ALIVE!
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