The Great Smoky Mountain Journal

Staff Reports

Posted: Sunday, January 21, 2018 07:24 PM

OUR VIEW: 11/22/2017 - SPECIAL THANKSGIVING EDITORIAL: This Thanksgiving, America Needs To Come To The Table Once Again As A Family And Humble Ourselves Before Our Creator

The date was November 1621 when the American holiday we now know as Thanksgiving began with an unprecedented cornucopia of food, fellowship and genuine thanksgiving.

The first settlers in America had a good reason to be thankful as do we today even though most in this modern time fail to grasp it.

About 102 Pilgrims had endured a 66-day voyage from England across the Atlantic to Massachusetts aboard the Mayflower the year before, guided by a God-given appetite for unhindered religious freedom. Roughly half the Pilgrims died of disease and malnutrition by the time the survivors sat down for the first meal to give thanksgiving with Native Americans.

Such a gathering was more than unlikely, it was a genuine miracle.

This first miracle in the New World is one that Americans would benefit to remember this and many Thanksgivings beyond.

This Thanksgiving 2017 finds this proud nation marked by division, hatred, and selfishness while also being completely out of alignment with the foundation of thankful brick and mortar set by the first Pilgrims and Native Americans.

The unlikely unity between the Native Americans and the Pilgrims then seems sadly bizarre today in the face so many who think protesting the national anthem of a nation that has given them so much is better than being grateful for the blessings of living in the land of the free and home of the brave.

The Native Americans and Pilgrims had their share of huge challenges to overcome and many times there were differences so deep many led to bloodshed at times. Eventually, however, both groups overcame them.

Their example screams to this hate-filled society we find ourselves living in today.

If these two deeply diverse groups were able to sit down together at a table – despite differences in language, culture, beliefs, appearance, and even basic tastes in food – then we in 2017 can certainly do the same today with those who we may have the same deep differences with. 

A poll out a few days before Thanksgiving showed that 30% of all Americans dreaded our annual day of giving thanks because they feared the political rhetoric in their families would spoil was is usually supposed to be a time to show love for each other and offer up appreciation to God for His blessings. It's a day we recognize God's greatest gifts, which include His Son Jesus Christ, our families, our health, and our friends.

We need a national reset and return to the spirit of the first feast 400 years ago.

What if we each looked for ways to get America back on track, to restore her to her long-lost luster that emulated thankfulness, generosity, and diversity? I believe that this type of America is what each of us, deep down, truly long for. In the end, it’s also the only America that really works for the betterment of the world. We have been ordained from the beginning to be a city on a hill for freedom for all those oppressed and in need of liberty. Forces within our nation seek to destroy that fabric almost on a daily basis.

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” says Proverbs 13:12. Any true and fair look within at our nation would be hard-pressed to prove that our nation is whole and healthy. That doesn't mean we are doomed. It just means the hope for American unity is deferred at this juncture, which has indeed weakened our national heart. We need a national healing that only God can give. 

One of the things we as a people must do to help this national renewal is rediscover our strength through our diversity and start respecting each other again. It starts by respecting those in authority over us including our President who we are grateful for, along with his family, this Thanksgiving season.

It's disgusting on so many levels to see the rampant disrespect for our nation. Folks, every citizen in this nation needs to thank God we live in a free nation before it's too late and we are no longer free. That is a fundamental reason we as Americans celebrate Thanksgiving and a good place to find a mutual starting place to heal.

The globalists and elites in this nation however, are trying to divide us. They always have. When they play the race card, the gender card, the sexism card, and the religion card, they tear at the very fabric of what our first settlers came here for while forging the fabric of this nation! Being an American citizen is a good thing, not a bad thing. This is the greatest nation in the entire world bar none! Are we perfect? Of course not. Do we have problems? Of course we do, just like all families do. Relationships are hard, even among siblings, parents and children. Are there things we need to work on as Americans. You bet.

Unity does not mean that we're going to always agree on every single thing. Unity means that we respect each other's differences and come to a consensus of what is best for the nation! That concept has been lost among our politicians. It is one reason however, I love our President.  Despite his rough edges, he has a heart for God and the nation. Most don't recognize it because of their hatred for the President but those of faith can discern such.

What is missing you may ask from our nation right now that would be the catalyst for such a unity and renewal?

Simply put, humility. Humility is what brings people together and it makes true unity possible.

When we humble ourselves before God, we look for things we can compliment rather than things we can criticize. We recognize that there is a God-given reason why each of us has two ears and one mouth – to listen, at a heart level, twice as much as we speak.

We recognize that we as a nation and individuals are not perfect and are all in need of redemption and repentance. We recognize that when we judge others we fail to see the mote in our own eyes while trying to take the beam out of our fellow mans.

We recognize that without God directing this nation we are doomed and destined for destruction because of the forces of evil that want to see America removed from the landscape of history.

This fight our nation finds itself in at this moment has always been spiritual and it will remain so until Jesus decides to come back to Earth.

Will just listening make all our differences go away? Of course not. But who knows, maybe listening a bit more to our brother’s differences, we may find out that we’re not that different after all.

Most misunderstandings today are based on misconceptions of who each of us are in light of others. That again is a by product of liberalism that has sought to divide us through race and identity politics that has nearly destroyed this nation at its core because of the distrust it has bred.

An attitude of gratitude, and some humility, goes a long, long way to making all of life much, much better and it will go a long way to make our nation better!

Our editorial earlier this week on the ungrateful dad of the son who shoplifted in China and blasted the President for, as he saw it, not having a role in his son's release, illustrated and reeks of what is wrong with our nation right now.

Lavar Ball’s own personal hatred of President Trump got in the way of what his true concern and cause should be - the love of his son.

In many ways, we all have become guilty of putting our politics ahead of our purpose on this earth and that is to be thankful creatures of a God in heaven who has bestowed upon us the most "bountiful blessings of heaven, " as Abraham Lincoln wrote when he declared a national fast day in March 1863 for the nation to repent during a time of spiritual declension.

Let me share with you what Lincoln said because it's worth repeating over and over this Thanksgiving season of 2017:

By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.

Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation.

And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.

And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity.

We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.

All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.

All I can say is amen and may God let it be so once more in this nation!

When I was a child I remember learning a little chorus in Sunday school that said this, "Red, and yellow, black, and white, we are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world."

ALL are precious in God’s sight no matter their color, creed or origin.

We must return to Him this Thanksgiving with all our hearts and be THANKFUL!!!!

We have a chance again to be part of a fresh miracle – one that our nation needs, big time, and which each of us with God’s help, can fire up the spark.

We really can sit down at a table together if we will be humble enough to do so. We not only can but we MUST if America is to survive her fight for survival in these last days.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. God bless.
  

Christopher McDonald, Publisher, Editor in Charge

Great Smoky Mountain Journal