A Blessing Above All Others

For progressive secularists, mendacious media milquetoasts, Hollywood’s hedonistic heretics, and self-proclaimed, politically elite glitterati — who not only refuse to recognize Thanksgiving as a reaffirmation of faith in God, but also strive to impose their non-belief on those who do — this uniquely American holiday is nothing more than a time to oversleep, overeat, overspend, and over-party. How sad. How wrong. How sinful. To those heathenish, unholy hellions, I speak one word: Freedom.

---

I kneel before the Giver of grace and mercy

Each Thanksgiving, as a family patriarch mindful of and thankful for my children and increasing number of grandchildren, I kneel before the Giver of grace and mercy — neither of which can be earned — to express gratitude for living in a country that offers freedoms denied to countless millions of suffering, oppressed people in other lands. In acknowledging the Lord’s loving kindness, I don’t enumerate my blessings, as that would be impossible, but I never fail to thank Him for the blessing of being an American, and for the blessing without which all other blessings would be diminished or nonexistent: Freedom. When that stalwart of liberty, Abraham Lincoln, proclaimed Thanksgiving as an annual national holiday, war was raging, not far away as are conflicts now engaging American soldiers, but within earshot. And yet, President Lincoln recognized that giving thanks was even more important during those dark days when economic hardship, horrific devastation and unimaginable loss of life swirled about him. Painfully aware that the very existence of “…a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…” was hanging in the balance, he did what God-fearing, God-loving, God-serving men must do: He gave thanks.

---

---

Some of the words Lincoln spoke when he authorized Thanksgiving as a national holiday bear repeating, for they remain as relevant now, during this time of national angst and uncertainty, as they were when he uttered them in 1863:

“No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the most-high God, Who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy … I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens … to observe the last Thursday of November … as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father…. “And I recommend … that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular … blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners … in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged and fervently implore the interposition of the almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.”

While we Americans should enjoy being with loved ones and eating delicious food on Thanksgiving Day, we must not neglect to kneel and thank the one true God of the universe for freedom: a blessing above all others.

---