A very joyful and blessed Thanksgiving to you all, dear friends! I am sitting at my desk with hot chocolate here in Oxford during a brief respite from cooking. My husband is napping after a late night of paper-writing. We have a duck in our slow-cooker and very tantalizing pumpkin pie on our (small) table. It's been sort of a fun experience cooking all of Thanksgiving dinner for the first time.
Anyway, since I had a breather, I thought I'd post a passage of Scripture that I think about in relation to Thanksgiving. It's valuable to have a holiday focused on remembering all the ways God has blessed us. I have a lot to give thanks for this year. But I think that it's also valuable to remember another dominant theme of Thanksgiving: that of pilgrimage. It's not a concept we think about much, nowadays, apart from remembering American history. But I find it encouraging to be reminded that life itself is a very long and difficult pilgrimage, even if lived in one small town. Those who follow Christ are seeking their true, heavenly home--and it takes an entire lifetime to arrive. As such, we too can receive the exhortation of Hebrews 11:
"These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city" (Heb. 11:13-6)
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