H A P P Y T H A N K S G I V I N G ! ! !
From our home and garden to yours, we thank you for being our readers and gardeners. You are a blessing in our lives! We are so glad to have grown a group of followers who love God in the garden and wish you a marvelous day with your loved ones. Enjoy this excerpt from God’s Word for Gardeners Bible as you celebrate joyfully today.
At the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, the Levites . . . were brought to Jerusalem to celebrate joyfully the dedication with songs of thanksgiving and with the music of cymbals, harps and lyres.
~Nehemiah 12:27
Read: Nehemiah 12:27 – 46
Oil & Sharpen with: Psalm 57:1 – 11; Jeremiah 30:18; Luke 19:10
Nehemiah welcomes us to witness a thanksgiving celebration — the sweet and joyful rejoicing of a treasure restored. The temple of the Lord, the walls enclosing Jerusalem and the Israelite people had been destroyed and strewn about the Fertile Crescent, and several generations of God’s people had grown up apart from the security of a cohesive community in their homeland. Yet God restored his people to their home and encircled once more the holy grounds of his sanctuary. The people had longed to be returned to their homeland with their God! How they rejoiced and celebrated with thankful hearts and the sweet fullness of relief after enduring a painful separation. God is merciful! Nehemiah assembled two choirs to give thanks for their glorious restoring, and sent them singing and dancing along the wall-tops, a triumphant procession of thankful music and cheer, a glad victory parade honoring the one who saves what is lost (Luke 19:10).
Governor Bradford declared a day of public Thanksgiving . . . a joyous occasion for all! . . . surely, one moment stood out in the Pilgrims’ memory — William Brewster’s prayer, as they began the festival. They had so much for which to thank God: for providing all their needs, even when their faith had not been up to believing that he would do so . . . for all his remarkable Providences in bringing them to this place and sustaining them.
— Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Light and the Glory, 1977
God’s people continue to enjoy a great heritage of thanksgiving celebrations. American and Canadian gardeners enjoy the tradition of Thanksgiving celebrations, our founders instilling is us the practice of thanking God for all we have and for his steadfast refuge in times of disaster and distress (Psalm 57:1 – 11).
Prayer: Lord, thank you for all the blessings you put in our lives — bringing a community together with the triumphant rejoicing of restoration. You are steadfast through it all — help me to sing! You bring back the lost causes and repair the broken walls of my life. I give you thanks, O God. Help me to happily embrace the heritage of Thanksgiving — perhaps a triumphal musical parade around the table [today]!
This excerpt appears in the Garden Tools section of the book as part of a week’s essays on Thanksgiving, page 588.
Photo Caption: © 2014 Shelley S. Cramm Pomegranates, grapes, and dates fill a cornucopia with a Holy Land harvest—fruits from Deuteronomy 8:8.
