Happy Thanksgiving!

The people of Israel had returned to their ancestral homeland after spending some fifty years in Babylonian bondage. They had been freed by an edict from a warrior king who thought it an ultimate insult to Babylon to send their former slaves back to their own lands. The former slaves certainly supported the policy.

Some of the Israelites remembered the former glory of their homeland, the Temple, the buildings, the roads, the public squares. They left Babylon, eager to return home. Many made the arduous trek, while others remained behind and established themselves as Judaism-in-diaspora. Those who returned were overjoyed as they approached what had once stood as the gates to Jerusalem. What they found, however, was utter devastation. No stone remained upon another. No Temple stood. There was no palace. There were no passable roads. Everything lay in ruin.

It took decades for the priests and prophets to inspire the people into any semblance recovery. They had been immobilized by hopelessness and immovable in their victimization. They were bitter at the fates that had brought them back to their own ancestral land. They blamed their leaders. They blamed the nations around them. They blamed God.

After some time, however, the priests and the prophets broke through the solid veneer of Israel's hopelessness by reminding them that they had been brought out of Babylon. Their freedoms had been restored. Their sovereignty was renewed. The only thing that was keeping them from restoring the splendor of the nation was the attitudes and perspectives of a broken people. The priests and prophets began to sing songs of celebration and thanksgiving. They began to paint pictures of hope and possibility.

Eventually, the people heard the songs of the priests. They envisioned the possibility that was promised by the prophets. A thankful heart slowly replaced the bitter and resentful one. A grateful attitude shaped a perspective of potential and possibility. They placed stone upon stone, and there was soon a building. They laid them, one against another, and there was a road. They built one structure at a time, one neighborhood, one vital element of their relationship with God. Within a century or so, the Temple was rededicated. The people of Israel had genuinely returned home.

The spirit of gratefulness and thanksgiving changes everything. You who read this are likely not the citizenry that is disenchanted, weighed down, frustrated. Instead, you are the priests and prophets who need to sing for the people songs of hope, possibility and promise. We are the harbingers of thanksgiving. We envision the new day.

Sing, friends! Shout! Let the people hear of God's love and forgiveness. Let them know that God's Spirit is within them and upon them, that nothing is impossible if we rely on the strength of that Spirit. Let them see the deliverance, the hope, the embodiment of God's will on earth. It is just out of our reach. An attitude of thanksgiving and a perspective of praise allow us to reach it.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!