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“Long before the Founding Fathers signed their lives to the bold and daring declaration that created our new nation, a hardy band of immigrants pledged their lives to God and to one another even before they set foot on land.  In this agreement, know as the Mayflower Compact, the Pilgrim Fathers reveal the reason they endured the perilous journey across the Atlantic in hope of founding a new colony-they believed they were on a mission for God, and they earnestly desired to ‘advance the Christian faith.’”

“Their agreement, in part, reads as follows:”

“Having undertaken for the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith, a voyage to plant a colony, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic.”

Please see: American Vision–for more of the article and information.

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• September 24, 1789: Elias Boudinot from New Jersey proposed that the House and Senate request that George Washington set a day of thanksgiving for “the many signal favors of Almighty God.”  he also said he “could not think of letting the session pass over without offering an opportunity to all the citizens of the United States of joining, with one voice, in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings he had poured down upon them.”
• There were other claims to the First Thanksgiving celebrated in the New World.  A small French Huguenot settlement, near where present day Jacksonville, Floridais, is recorded as singing a psalm of Thanksgiving to God, beeching Him that it would please Him to continue his accustomed goodness.  This was on June 30, 1564 and their leader was Rene de LaudonniPre.
• In 1610, during the “starving time”, the colonists at Jamestown called for a time of Thanksgiving.  There original number was 409 and they were reduced to 60 during the hard winter.  The colonists prayed for help and a ship from England arrived with food and supplies.
• June 29, 1676 was shown to have been the first official Thanksgiving Day.  It was celebrated in Charles-town, Massachusetts.
• There was no “nation” at this time but the celebrations was religious and specifically Christian in origin. A community of God-fearing Puritans created Thanksgiving and set it aside to thank the Lord for His many blessings.  The day they chose, coming after the harvest at a time of year when farm work was light.  This fit into the rhythm of their rural life.
• Abraham Lincoln, on October 3, 1863 declared the last Thursday of November to be a nationwide celebration of thanksgiving:  “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, to proud to pray to the God that made us. O human counsel hath devised, not 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 in every part of the United States, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday in November next as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent father who dwelleth in heaven.”
• Starting with Lincoln, Presidents set the last Thursday in November aside for a national day of Thanksgiving.  Later it was changed to the third Thursday in November “to give more shopping time between Thanksgiving and Christmas” by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

By: John Alfred Hultman (1861-1942)

Thanks, O God, for boundless mercy, From Thy gracious throne above; Thanks for every need provided, From the fullness of thy love!  Thanks for daily toil and labor, and for the rest when shadows fall; Thanks for love of friend and neighbor, And thy goodness unto all!

Thanks for thorns as well as roses, Thanks for weakness and for health; Thanks for clouds as well as sunshine, Thanks for poverty and wealth!  Thanks for pain as well as pleasure–All Thou sendest day by day; And Thy Word, our dearest treasure, Shedding light upon our way.

Thanks, O God, for home and fireside, Where we share our daily bread; Thanks for hours of sweet communion, When by Thee our souls are fed! Thanks for grace in time of sorrow, And for joy and peace in Thee; Thanks for hope today, tomorrow, And for all eternity!

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Thank:  bless, declare blessed, profess, confess, praise (2 Sam. 14:22; Matt. 11;25)

Thank Offering:  Offering to show thanks to God for a gift or for His help (2 Chron. 29:31; 33:16)

Thanksgiving:  Gratitude, especially toward God, for a gift or action (Jonah 2:9; 2 Cor. 4:15)  Thanksgiving is an important element of Christian worship expressed in everyday life as well as during worship services.  may Psalms express thanksgiving.

How to you show thanksgiving in word?  action?  attitude?

Praise and Thanksgiving

O My God,  Thou fairest, greatest, first of all objects, my heart admires, adores, loves thee, for my little vessel is as full as it can be, and I would pour out all that fullness before thee in ceaseless flow.

When I think upon and converse with thee–ten thousand delightful thoughts spring up, ten thousand sources of pleasure are unsealed, ten thousand refreshing joys spread over my heart, crowding into every moment of happiness.

I bless thee for the soul thou hast created, for adorning it, sanctifying it, though it is fixed in barren soil; for the body thou hast given me, for preserving its strength and vigour, for providing senses to enjoy delights, for the ease and freedom of my limbs, for hands, eyes, ears, that do thy bidding; for thy royal bounty providing my daily support, for a full table and overflowing cup, for appetite, taste, sweetness, for social joys of relative and friends, for ability to serve others, for a heart that feels sorrows and necessities, for am able to care for my fellow-men, for opportunities of spreading happiness around, for loved ones in the joys of heaven, for my own expectation of seeing thee clearly. 

I love thee above the powers of lanuage to express, for what thou art to thy creatures.

Increase my love, O my God, through time and eternity.

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By: George J. Elvey (1816-1893)

 Come, ye thankful people, come–Raise the song of harvest-home: All is safely gathered in Ere the winter storms begin. God, our maker, doth provide, For our wants to be supplied: come to God’s own temple, come-Raise the song of harvest-home.

All the world is God’s own field; Fruit unto His praise to yield: Wheat and tares together sown, Unto joy or sorrow grown. f]First the blade and then the ear, Then the full corn shall appear: Lord of harvest, grant that we Wholesome grain and pure may be.

For the Lord our God own field, And shall take His harvest home: from his field shall in that day, All offenses purge away–Give His angels charge at last, In the fire the tares to cast, But the fruitful ears to store, In His garner evermore.

Even so, Lord, quickly come to Thy final harvest-home; Gather Thou Thy people in, Free from sorrow, free from sin; There, forever purified, In Thy presence to abide; Come, with all Thine angels, com-Raise the glorious harvest home.