Happy Thanksgiving!
/Church email Nov. 27, 2024
Hi New Life!
A very Blessed and Happy Thanksgiving to all! May we always be mindful of the Lords' great blessing upon the entirety of the USA and upon each of us individually. God is good, and He deserves all the praise, glory and honor!
As we gather at our various tables of fellowship tomorrow, may we be quick to offer the Lord the recognition He so rightly deserves. Remember 1 Thessalonians 5:18, "Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you". Perhaps the Lord will call upon you to share a thought or a word or a prayer with your loved ones on Thanksgiving Day.
For anyone in need of fellowship and dinner tomorrow, please know that Common Ground Ministries 194 Winter Street, will be serving a wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner at their facilities from 10:30AM-1PM. Feel to join and to spead the word.
Below is the Proclamation of the first Thanksgiving given by President Abraham Lincoln on October 3, 1863. It is a stark reminder of our great need as a nation to remember, and to turn to the One who is the source of our many blessings.
Happy Thanksgiving!
All For Jesus!
Pastor Rick and Pamela
President Abraham Lincoln - Proclamation, October 3, 1863
"The year that is drawing toward 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 even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised, nor 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.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union."
A M E N!