The 12 Days of Thanksgiving is a time for us to start preparing our hearts each day as we move toward our 2022 Thanksgiving Day on Thursday November 24th. In each of the 12 days, this brief guide shares quotes from the Bible, the most unique of all books, and gives thanks for our blessings. We also share interesting historical facts about one of America’s most misunderstood celebrations. We end each devotion with a suggested activity. The significance of Thanksgiving can often be missed when it is only a one-day celebration full of hectic activity or overwhelming food. A week into Christmas we wonder what happened to it. In preparing for Thanksgiving during the 12 days, our hearts are allowed to draw closer to God in gratitude. It is also leads our hearts into the Advent Christmas season that follows right on Thanksgiving heals helping us be more Christ focused. 

 

Day #1 Sunday, November 13th

Proclaiming Thankfulness

The Christian faith is a public faith. It’s origins, predictions or prophesies, miracles, and failure of its followers are out in public for all to see. Its leader Jesus Christ in the prime of his ministry did not even have a recorded permanent home. Jesus followers proclaim their allegiance to him by a public baptism which symbolizes and marks their being born again by the Holy Spirit. It is fitting that followers of Jesus would love this holiday of public national thanksgiving. As it says in the book of Isaiah, “We will declare his deeds.”

The word to read and focus on today is Isaiah 12:

And in that day you will say:

“O Lord, I will praise You;
Though You were angry with me,
Your anger is turned away, and You comfort me.
Behold, God is my salvation,
I will trust and not be afraid;
‘For Yah, the Lord, is my strength and song;
He also has become my salvation.’ ”

Therefore with joy you will draw water
From the wells of salvation.

And in that day you will say:

“Praise the Lord, call upon His name;
Declare His deeds among the peoples,
Make mention that His name is exalted.
Sing to the Lord,
For He has done excellent things;
This is known in all the earth.
Cry out and shout, O inhabitant of Zion,
For great is the Holy One of Israel in your midst!” (NKJV)

God had called Isaiah to declare him and his truth to the people. Here the great profit tells a rebellious people to praise the Lord and declare his deeds to all. He asks us to sing and shout about our God for all the hear.

This same call goes out today. This public proclamation of God is as true now as when Isaiah first cried out. The living God who we worship today is available to all people. Jesus offers salvation and fellowship to anyone with a repentant heart who will call out up on his name and believe that he is the Son of God spoken about in the Old Testament who died on the cross and rose on the third day for their sins. It is a gift available to all.

Did you know? Even though today Thanksgiving is most associated with the Pilgrim ‘harvest” celebration of 1621, it was not the only celebration of thanks in the early settlement of America by Europeans.  There were quite a few recorded public professions of thanks in what is now the United States before the Pilgrims. One occurred in 1598 where the grateful celebrants had no problem proclaiming their thanks and gratefulness to God on the Rio Grande river in what is today Texas.

This Thanksgiving event was written down by Captain Gaspar Perez de Villagra in a poem entitled Hisotrica de la Nueva Mexico. It tells of a Thanksgiving lead by Franciscan priests for a mix of Spanish explorers and Native Americans after the explorers had just survived a harrowing journey and found the lifesaving water of the Rio Grande.

There band was lead by Juan de Onate. The explorers had run out of food on their 50 day journey across the desert and had not been able to find water for four days before coming up the Rio Grand river which more resembled a creek at the time. When they recovered from their deprivations, they invited the local Mansos tribe to a Mass and celebrated providence. They prayed for rain for the local tribe. A prayer that was later answered ending a long drought.

Villagra wrote in his detailed journal.

“Joyfully we tarried ‘neath the pleasant shade of the wide spreading trees which grew along the riverbanks. It seemed to us that these were, indeed, the Elysian fields of happiness, where, forgetting all our past misfortunes, we could lie beneath the shady bowers and rest our tired aching bodies, enjoying those comforts so long denied us.

We built a great bonfire and roasted the meat and fish, and then all sat down to a repast the like of which we had never enjoyed before. We were happy that our trials were over; as happy as were the passengers in the Ark when they saw the dove returning with the olive branch in his beak, bringing tidings that the deluge had subsided.”

Try today: Look up who were the first people to settle the place you live today and share it with your family or close friends.