Thanksgiving and Praise.

“It is the duty of nations as well as men to own their dependence on the overruling power of God.  To confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow and yet with a short hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime Truth announced in the Holy Scripture, proven by history— that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.

We know that by His Divine Law nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world.  May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people.

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven.  We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity.  We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown, but we have forgotten God!  We have forgotten the gracious Hand that preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our own hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.  Intoxicated with unbroken success we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving Grace, and too proud to pray to the God who made us.

It is seen to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and greatly 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, those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwells in the Heavens.”

— Abraham Lincoln

1863

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
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Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously