A Proclamation of Thanksgiving

When was the last time you heard a Presidential address that brought you to tears?

This past Sunday, I heard this excerpt from Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863. It was penned mere months after Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle of the American Civil War. It was a year of perilous uncertainty when our nation was on the brink of moral and political collapse, and families were bitterly divided and grieving. And yet, even amidst strife and humbling loss, Lincoln extolled his hopeful thanksgiving for the nation’s many blessings.  

I invite you to read Lincoln’s proclamation below and consider what it would mean to adopt such a posture of gratitude—not the type of gratitude that I implore my children toward (“Remember to say thank you!”), but the type that has its eyes wide open to the struggles and suffering around us and yet still responds with humble thanks for our many blessings and a softened heart to those less fortunate.

I wish you such a Thanksgiving.

Gratefully,

Colin

By the President of the United States: A Proclamation

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.…

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.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United Stated States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eight

       -Abraham Lincoln