March 10

Joshua 1-5 Thanksgiving Memorials

It is a well known fact that the first Thanksgiving Day was celebrated by the Pilgrim Fathers in 1621 to give thanks for their survival in the New World. In 1789, President George Washington issued a Thanksgiving Day Proclamation to commemorate the first Pilgrim celebration. But, Thomas Jefferson the third president discontinued it, calling Thanksgiving “a kingly practice." For the next decades, Thanksgiving was observed by some individual states but there was no uniformity as to when this occurred. Then, in 1828, Mrs. Sarah Hale the author of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" began campaigning for the restoration of Thanksgiving as a national holiday. She wrote letters and sought appointments with national leaders from the President on down. Time and time again, she was politely rebuffed, sometimes being told it was impossible or impractical to try to legislate. Finally in 1863, President Lincoln listened seriously to her plea that the North and South lay aside enmities and strife on Thanksgiving Day. He proclaimed the fourth Thursday of November as the official "National Thanksgiving Day." This day was finally ratified by the US Congress in 1941.

Mrs. Sarah Hale realized the natural tendency of people to forget the works of God in their lives. In our reading today, God also realized this tendency in people. So, God instituted his own thanksgiving celebration with the crossing of the Jordan River.

The event started with a new president of the L.N.T. (Largest Nomadic Tribe) on the planet. Remember our estimates of 3 to 5 million people. Now they have approached the Jordan River which at flood stage swells to 1/2 mile wide. It is always fast moving since it has a 610 foot drop from Galilee to the Dead Sea. So how is the nation to cross this obstacle? God whips up a miracle, very similar to the Red Sea just a bit smaller in scale, to establish Joshua as his man. But God commands something very unusual in the midst of this miracle. It is the collection of the rocks. 12 stones are to be lifted out of the river. What is interesting is that Joshua also made a pillar of rocks in the middle of the river. There is no record that God had instructed him to do this. This was probably a spontaneous act of worship. Joshua already knew what God's purpose was in having them carry the stones from Jordan, so he simply decided to pile up 12 stones in Jordan as a personal testimony to what God had done for Israel in backing up the waters of the Jordan River. The text tells us that these stones are there to this day. The stones described here were probably visible when the Jordan ran low.

These stones served as a permanent call to give thanks for the mighty works of God. It is so easy for us to lose perspective and to forget to give thanks. We tend to spend most of our time asking God and so little of our time thanking him. Today, remember for a few minutes the great acts of God in your life:
1. Victories the Lord has given you in the past.
2. Situations when God has been especially faithful to you.
3. Obvious answers to prayer.
4. Signs of God’s care for you in the storms of life.
If you need some help, thank him for clean water, food, shelter, freedom, Bibles, his faithfulness.