Thanksgiving Canceled?

Last year, Thanksgiving was canceled in many places because of COVID. This year, maybe we should cancel it because of a lack of thankfulness. I tried looking up some figures on the number of Mayflower Pilgrims who survived the first winter. What I found was a cornucopia of bitterness. The Pilgrims were "religious extremists" (which means they believed the Bible and acted like it) or articles about the cruelty to "indigenous peoples." I read another one about how it was the Pilgrim's politics that starved them out. The Pilgrims who settled this country were not perfect. But neither are the Puritans of Wokeness, who demand complete conformity to their ideology. I am thankful for this country and those who built it and care little for grievance mongers who want to tear it down.

The economy is bad and not likely to get better any time soon. But consider, nearly half of the Pilgrims didn't make it through the first winter due to sickness starvation. Landing in the North East at the beginning of winter, it is too late in the year to plant, and talk about supply chain issues! The IGA market opened in Clay County. I saw a news story noting this is the only grocery store in Clay County. Maybe, but there are small businesses in Clay where you can buy food. We have options. A few months ago, my family had COVID and we quarantined. The food supplies were running low, and my wife ordered groceries through a food service, and for a small fee, someone went shopping for us and delivered the food to our front porch. We had some neighbors and church members help us out as well, and I am thankful. Not only for people who were able and willing to help but that we weren't as sick as we could have been and were never in danger of starving. Imagine coming to the new world, with no shops, no stores, and facing a winter alone in a wilderness. And then coming out the other side, thankful. Not angry. Not bitter. But thankful to be alive, to have another day.

The Lord has shown our nation that there is a God in Heaven who does what He pleases. He humbled us with the virus, but we turned it into a means of political manipulation and fighting. We lifted up athletes and sports as gods and THE God took that away for a year, and we come back more defiant and bitter than before. We pride ourselves in our military power, and God humbled us in the Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco. We pride ourselves on our economy and abundance, and God shut that off rather quickly. What's next? How long will we defy the living God? Marxism demands angry and bitter people. You cannot be thankful if your heart is full of envy of someone else's, "privilege," or, as I like to call them, blessings. I'm not ashamed of what God has blessed me with and won't apologize for God's kindness to me. "In every thing give thanks," 1Thessalonians 5:18.