(This meditation turns out to be a sequel to last Sunday's.)

Trinity Church is celebrating Thanksgiving Day on the last Sunday after Pentecost this year, the day the Church traditionally celebrates the feast of Christ the King. Our personal thanksgiving might start right there with joy and praise in our hearts for God’s gracious gift of the Incarnation of Love, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. The lessons appointed for today abound with examples of God’s generous and steadfast love and mercy through the ages, inspiring our gratitude and awe for all the ways God works in our lives, in our world.

In this country at the season of Thanksgiving, we remember especially our Pilgrim forebears who joined in thanksgiving for their survival after that first difficult year (and our Virginia forebears with their first thanksgiving celebration, as well). Perhaps they read our lesson from the Hebrew scriptures that day as part of their celebration: “For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing,” It certainly would have been appropriate, as would our psalm for today, acknowledging God’s blessings in creation, in seedtime and harvest: “You crown the year with goodness, and your paths overflow with plenty.” Our country is blessed and so are we.

As our lives move farther and farther away from the farm, it is good for us to pause and remember all those who labor in the production and distribution of our food and to recognize our need to share our bounty with others, as Paul reminds us in our epistle lesson. While we celebrate this season with food, great quantities of food, in thanksgiving for a bountiful harvest, it is more than a harvest festival. It is the time for celebrating all of God’s blessings in our lives especially, as our gospel lesson points out, for God’s saving and healing grace.

“Count your many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.”