Tip of My Iceberg

photo courtesy of Ann on Unsplash

Thanksgiving is a day of choosing to consider being grateful for all we have.

It’s more than a turkey, pumpkin pie, and football games. I sometimes miss the significance of what it means to have a heart of gratitude because I’ve immersed myself in what have become the rudiments of the day–feasting and football.

It’s easy to get sidetracked.

On October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln made a proclamation that we, as a nation, should be grateful for Almighty God for His blessings on our country.

We were in the midst of the Civil War, a horrific conflict that claimed the lives of over 620,000 soldiers. July 1-3 of that year, the soldiers from the north and south fought the bloodiest battle of the war, just outside of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Over 51,000 people died in that battle.

Yet Abraham Lincoln encouraged the nation to be grateful to the Lord for the bounty with which He had blessed our nation. He saw that we’d been blessed with fruitful fields and peace with other countries, while our own country battled itself.

“In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity,…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 theatre of military conflict.” We were at war, but our country was at peace with everyone else in the world. Lincoln saw with gratitude that we had God to thank for the success of industry and agriculture, the increase in the population, and the gift of freedom from control of other governments.

Lincoln was making a choice. He saw that “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.” He chose to focus on the hope of what this country stood for rather than the bleakness of the war.

Author and coach Laurie Buchanan said, “Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing.” If we don’t choose to change the way we think or act, we are effectively choosing to continue the status quo, whether it’s an action, attitude, or a relationship. We get to pick our perspective on a situation.

In the midst of a bloody war that defined his presidency, President Lincoln chose to focus on the hope that this country was built on. Freedom, which was a work in progress, and opportunity, which we still struggle to offer to all. He made the decision to make the focal point of this proclamation gratitude for what we did have as a nation.

He didn’t forget the losses. In this speech, seeking a day of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November, he remarked about our responsibilities in light of those around us.

“And I recommend to them (his countrymen) 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 restore it…”

Let’s choose to be grateful this Thanksgiving, and every day, for the gift of life and the opportunity to choose how we’ll live it.

I can choose to be filled with gratitude each day. This isn’t saccharine sweetness but Godly hope.

How will you choose to focus your heart?