Collect for Thanksgiving Day
“O MOST merciful Father, who hast blessed the labours of the husbandman in the returns of the fruits of the earth; We give thee humble and hearty thanks for this thy bounty; beseeching thee to continue thy loving-kindness to us, that our land may still yield her increase, to thy glory and our comfort; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” (1928 BCP, 265)
I am thankful for America, the bright light on the hilltop, a beacon to the world, from sea to shining sea.
I am thankful for my own year of life, my own year of living, my own year of prayer, penitence, and pleasure.
I am thankful for my latest novel, Angel Mountain, a story about the state of Western Civilization, Intelligent Design and Evolution, faith and science, cancel culture and free speech, Heaven and the Apocalypse, true history and the Holocaust, the sanctity of live and human dignity.
I am thankful for America, for her freedoms, her liberty and law, her First Amendment and the right to worship, peacefully gather and voice our hearts and minds.
I am thankful for America, for her people and their courage to stand up to tyranny rising, to speak the truth, to label lies, and sort fact from fiction.
I am thankful for America, for her entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, homemakers, nurses, farmers, and all other workers with their unique talents; for books and writers, music and musicians.
I am thankful for President Trump and Operation Warp Speed, for his devotion to our country, for protecting us from threats within and without, for his epic heroism.
I am thankful for America, for the falling pandemic death rates in a country so vast and diverse.
I am thankful for America, for those who defend her, on foreign or domestic soil, military and police.
I am thankful for America, for those who cherish academic freedom and have suffered for it.
I am thankful for America, for her past and present and future, for her wars of defense and correction, civil and uncivil, for righting wrongs and freeing slaves, for Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers, for the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
I am thankful for our loving God, for his Son and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, for His Holy Spirit indwelling in us, for his promises of Heaven.
I am thankful for our Church and clergy; for the faithful who pray for one another; for those who sing His praises, daily, hourly, minute by minute; for the hymns, thundering and poetic and uplifting, sung for centuries, ringing into this minute of our day; for Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer; for Holy Sacraments.
I am thankful for our tabby cat Laddie, who climbed the ladder to Heaven, who shared his time on Earth with us; for animals and plants and colors and seasons; for wind and rain, for stars and planets, for day and night, for the sun and the moon, for apples and pears, for plentiful harvests, for ice cream, for espresso, for sleep, for dreams, for work and play, for seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching; for laughter, for faces, for smiles; for kindness, love, and generosity.
I am thankful for friends and family, for children, born and unborn, for the miracle and mystery of life itself.
May God bless America, from sea to shining sea.
Epistle for Thanksgiving Day, St. James 1:16+
“DO not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” (1928 BCP, 265-6)
Christine Sunderland
Christine Sunderland 