Episode Transcript
Thanksgiving. Really it is a season of really deep roots.
It's more than you know football.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And food and our Thanksgiving holiday.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
If you think about it.
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It comes from a small band of men and women
and children, and they landed at Plymouth Rock.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
The rock is still there. And we tend to picture
them in.
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That old school Sunday school way, like this picture you
see with clothes that are spotless, families smiling, and everyone
they're looking peaceful, like they stepped out of a painting
in a museum gift show up.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
The reality is very different if you think about it.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
These people they chose to leave everything familiar. They left family,
their traditions, their jobs, and they even left the land
they loved. And they boarded a ship headed for a
(01:36):
place that they had never seen, and they were unsure
what waited for them when they arrived. Think of that scenario,
and we have a tendency we like to roman size
(01:57):
the past, don't we like to romanticize? Said we had
all kinds of layers of stuff on it. But the pilgrim,
they really they lived a life that was brutally.
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Hard. Half of them died half the first winter.
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They faced hunger, sickness, cold, and danger. On a level
most of us could never experience. And yet, somehow, somehow
woven through all that hardship, what comes through is gratitude.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
What gratitude for my tough times? Gratitude. I was always moved.
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By the writing of Robert Kings, who used to teach
at Wheaton College. He studied and wrote extensively on the Pilgrims,
and I like what he wrote. He had this to
say about the hard life of the Pilgrims.
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He said, human frailty is part of their story. Are
you ready for this?
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They argued among themselves. Okay, they got fooled by strangers,
they could be self righteous. They struggled financially, they were
scared by wolves. They literally got lost in the woods.
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They were lost.
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One of their key leaders even got caught in an
indigenous deer trap and hung upside down.
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Think about that. This is the group who we point
to as the example of courage and endurance. Yet they
were a mess.
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Sometimes it wasn't always smooth sailing, and they didn't pretend
to be perfect either.
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And yet when you move on, in.
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Just a few, just a few short years, the Pilgrims,
they built churches, schools, hospitals.
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And they printed books.
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Think of that their beginning, though it was rough, it
was rough, their commitment, their faith and gratitude it was
able to build something lasting, something.
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Bigger than the them.
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And if you think about it, friends, that's kind of
like we're what we've been doing around here.
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Very similar. I think it is.
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Insightful when I think of the first week just before
we moved in this building, in this campus. The Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel at that time they had.
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A staff person who was the religious writer.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
They came out here and they spent an afternoon doing
a feature story on this church, loaded with pictures, and
I love what they wrote. They said that congregation their
modern day pioneers and Pilgrims, And I think that's appropriate
(05:58):
if you think about what has been, but also as
we look at what is ahead. And I mentioned that
because here is something less we formid that after the
early Pilgrims, right after they start, once they arrived, once
they got established, what they did.
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Faded.
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It faded from memory and it was not reinstated until
Abraham Lincoln revived it nearly two hundred and forty years later.
Think of that gap, It just faded away, what it
took for this country to be established. And I think
(06:50):
it's intriguing and insightful. What was happening when Lincoln said,
we have to remember these roots and what they stand for.
He did it during the most painful, divided times in
our nation's history.
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There was a civil war going on.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
There was a civil war, and leecoln knew that the
country is hurting.
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It's hurting.
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He knew people were exhausted, they were angry, they were grieving, they.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Were confused, and he believed.
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That remembering God's goodness could help heal a wounded nation.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
He got it. He's solid.
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Faith in God. Not to divide a nation. No, that
wasn't the objective. It was the role that that faith
could have in uniteing a nation.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
And here is a part of what Lincoln role.
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These are his own words of why he believed it
was important for Thanksgiving to be re established as a
national holiday.
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He said, we have been blessed more than we deserve.
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We enjoyed peace and prosperity for many years, but we.
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Have forgotten God.
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We started believing that our blessings came from our own
brilliance and success.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
We became self sufficient too, proud to pray too proud
to recognize the God who made us.
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Wow.
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Pretty powerful now that admission. That was courageous.
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And Lincoln pushed for Thanksgiving so that this country.
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Could return to attitude and unity and humility.
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Okay, and maybe we need that same spirit today. Not
because our problems are the same, they're not, they're very different,
but because our hearts can.
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Be the same. We can forget God to we forget
what we have. We get so focused on what's missing.
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That we miss the beauty of what is already in
front of us.
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So here's the big idea. I want you to popter
this Thanksgiving.
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As you're with friends and family, William, do whatever you
do at.
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The table, to think of this.
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If God could use them, then maybe God could use
us to.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Think of that.
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If God could use them, maybe God can.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Use you two. Maybe God can work in us.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Even when we feel like we are dangling upside down
in a metaphorical deer trap.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
In the midst of deer season. Well, let's bring it home.
Let's bring it home Thanksgiving. It begins with a shift
in focus.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
It is not pretending that everything's perfect, because it's not.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
It's choosing It is a decision.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Just as we commit ourselves before God, we say, this
is what I'm going to be about. This is my
commitment to mission and ministry. It's choosing to see what
is good even when the challenges remain. It is learning
to spot blessings between the cracks of real life.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
So Thanksgiving it it's time to stick at our hearts.
What we hold tight and won't let go of, or
what we give freely to God? What do we trust?
(11:55):
What do we chase and go after? What do we ignore?
Real gratitude shifts us from.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Anxiety to living in a spirit of trust, from scarcity
to abundance, from fear to faith, and it grounds us,
It humbles us, and it softens us.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
It opens our eyes to what God has been doing
all along.
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God has been doing all along, and to just be
grateful and thankful for that.
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So as you cook, as you travel, as you gather, and.
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As you enjoy this Thanksgiving season, remember the Pilgrims.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
It's part of our historical roots.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
We are historical roots directly related to that where we
are it for this country. We're the first ones running
around this place say there is a God. Remember the
Pilgrims who chose faith over fear. And I think we
got to remember Lincoln as well, who pushed a broken
(13:22):
nation back towards gratitude. He saw the wisdom in that
and remember that gratitude.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
You know, it's not a holiday that.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I want going to be in gratitude one day. It
really it is a discipline, and I would go so
far to say gratitude is also a spiritual discipline. It
is a spiritual discipline because it deals with the mindset,
and from that mindset.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
There is the daily posture. It is a sacred stewardship
of all our lives are about.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
That's why I can't think of any better time when
we have this annual gathering.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Of those who's a part of the fellowship of this church.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Whether you're a member or a friend or whatever you are,
you're here because because you find you can connect with
the Lord and others through here. It is a time
say I'm in. I'm all in in this game.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
I'm not holding back.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Everything I have is for the glory of God. Everything.
May God give us that kind of courage and humility
and a thankful heart.
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