Preview

I’ve noticed, as I’ve shopped around town, that everyone is skipping Thanksgiving and going right to Christmas.  I don’t see any Thanksgiving decorations.  In fact, this is the first year that Black Friday is beginning Thanksgiving night.  It seems there’s a big build up for Halloween and then we go right to Christmas. No pause.

President Abraham Lincoln, in the middle of the Civil War,  decided the nation needed a pause.  He wrote the Thanksgiving Proclamation to create a national holiday to remember from whom our blessings come.  

He writes:

“The year that is drawing towards 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 soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.”

GateWay will pause the next two weeks to review what the Bible has to say about being thankful.  Prepare this week by reading Psalm 100, it is a Psalm of Thanksgiving, the attitude not the holiday!