Prayer of thanks for the first week of Advent by Eric Stedfeld

I was glad when they said unto me, "let us go into the house of the Lord, where the tribes of the Lord go up, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord." For there are set thrones of judgment. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good.

Loving Father, Gracious Lord:

Thank you for your care for us, and for being a secure refuge in time of trouble. In your justice please show mercy for those who are oppressed and suffering. Grant your peace in the world, not due to any merits of your creation or of your children, but in the reconciliation you provided through Christ your son, whose birth we celebrate as we enter this Advent season. By taking on flesh and suffering the punishment we deserve for our sins, securing our redemption, the law is fulfilled in love. Thank you for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. Show us also, how to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Thank you for the opportunity this past week to remember your many blessings. Thank you for all your gifts so freely bestowed on us: life and health and safety, work and rest – and for all that is beautiful in creation and in the lives of people we praise and glorify your holy name. We thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone. Give us thankful hearts full of gratitude towards you, and help us to become blessings to others as well, seeking out opportunities to serve them and you.

Be with your children around the world, and those in leadership in the church, that they may express your truth in their guidance and teachings. Grant us all the opportunity to exercise those spiritual gifts that you give through your holy spirit. Show us how we can encourage one another to reflect a godly character in our lives and interactions with others, and grow in grace. And guide us locally at our home church, in our ministry and outreach to our neighbors around us.

Fill our hearts with all joy and peace in believing, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

Grateful People Are Happier, Healthier Long After the Leftovers Are Gobbled Up

This week's Wall Street Journal article speaks to how feelings of gratitude breed happiness and well-being - well worth a read! Our resources page features helpful books based upon some of this research, with more coming soon, including gratitude journals to regularly record whatever you are grateful for that day. And please add your thanks to our "I am thankful for..." sharing place. As we transition from the Thanksgiving holiday into Advent, let's keep giving thanks through Christmas and into the New Year!

Thanksgiving prayer by Harry Jewell

We Give Thanks

Our Father in Heaven,
We give thanks for the pleasure
Of gathering together for this occasion.
We give thanks for this food
Prepared by loving hands.
We give thanks for life,
The freedom to enjoy it all
And all other blessings.
As we partake of this food,
We pray for health and strength
To carry on and try to live as You would have us.
This we ask in the name of Christ,
Amen.

Prayer of General Thanksgiving by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, 1489-1556

Almighty God, Father of all mercies,
we your unworthy servants give humble and hearty thanks
for all your goodness and loving kindness to us and to all people;
we bless you for our creation, preservation and all the blessings of this life;
but above all for your amazing love
in the redemption of the world through our Lord Jesus Christ;
for the means of grace;
and for the hope of glory.

And, we pray, give us that due sense of all your mercies,
that our hearts may be truly thankful
and that we may declare your praise
not only with our lips, but in our lives,
by giving up ourselves to your service,
and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory,
now and for ever. Amen.

Thanksgiving poem by Janie Alford

Thanks Be To God

I do not thank thee, Lord, that I have bread to eat while others starve;
Nor yet for work to do while empty hands solicit heaven;
Nor a body strong while other bodies flatten beds of pain.
No, not for these do I give thanks!

But I am grateful, Lord, because my meager loaf I may divide;
For that my busy hands may move to meet another's need;
Because my doubled strength I may expend to steady one who faints.
Yes, for all these do I give thanks!

For heart to share, desire to bear and will to lift,
Flamed into one by deathless Love -
Thanks be to God for this! Unspeakable! His Gift!

Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation, October 3, 1863

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful years and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the Source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the field of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than theretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

In testimony wherof I have herunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 3d day of October, A.D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

[Signed]
A. Lincoln

Thanksgiving Day Prayer by Mary Fairchild

Heavenly Father, on Thanksgiving Day
We bow our hearts to You and pray.
We give You thanks for all You've done
Especially for the gift of Jesus, Your Son.
For beauty in nature, Your glory we see
For joy and health, friends and family,
For daily provision, Your mercy and care
These are the blessings You graciously share.
So today we offer this response of praise
With a promise to follow You all of our days.

The First National Proclamation of Thanksgiving, Continental Congress, November 1, 1777

FOR AS MUCH as it is the indispensable Duty of all Men to adore the superintending Providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with Gratitude their Obligation to him for Benefits received, and to implore such farther Blessings as they stand in Need of: And it having pleased him in his abundant Mercy, not only to continue to us the innumerable Bounties of his common Providence; but also to smile upon us in the Prosecution of a just and necessary War, for the Defense and Establishment of our unalienable Rights and Liberties; particularly in that he hath been pleased, in so great a Measure, to prosper the Means used for the Support of our Troops, and to crown our Arms with most signal success:

It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive Powers of these UNITED STATES to set apart THURSDAY, the eighteenth Day of December next, for SOLEMN THANKSGIVING and PRAISE: That at one Time and with one Voice, the good People may express the grateful Feelings of their Hearts, and consecrate themselves to the Service of their Divine Benefactor; and that, together with their sincere Acknowledgments and Offerings, they may join the penitent Confession of their manifold Sins, whereby they had forfeited every Favor; and their humble and earnest Supplication that it may please GOD through the Merits of JESUS CHRIST, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of Remembrance; That it may please him graciously to afford his Blessing on the Governments of these States respectively, and prosper the public Council of the whole: To inspire our Commanders, both by Land and Sea, and all under them, with that Wisdom and Fortitude which may render them fit Instruments, under the Providence of Almighty GOD, to secure for these United States, the greatest of all human Blessings, INDEPENDENCE and PEACE: That it may please him, to prosper the Trade and Manufactures of the People, and the Labor of the Husbandman, that our Land may yield its Increase: To take Schools and Seminaries of Education, so necessary for cultivating the Principles of true Liberty, Virtue and Piety, under his nurturing Hand; and to prosper the Means of Religion, for the promotion and enlargement of that Kingdom, which consisteth in Righteousness, Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost.

And it is further recommended, That servile Labor, and such Recreation, as, though at other Times innocent, may be unbecoming the Purpose of this Appointment, be omitted on so solemn an Occasion.

Quotation by Johannes A. Gaertner, 1912-1996

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.

The First Thanksgiving Proclamation, June 20, 1676

The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present War with the Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst of his judgments he hath remembered mercy, having remembered his Footstool in the day of his sore displeasure against us for our sins, with many singular Intimations of his Fatherly Compassion, and regard; reserving many of our Towns from Desolation Threatened, and attempted by the Enemy, and giving us especially of late with many of our Confederates many signal Advantages against them, without such Disadvantage to ourselves as formerly we have been sensible of, if it be the Lord's mercy that we are not consumed, It certainly bespeaks our positive Thankfulness, when our Enemies are in any measure disappointed or destroyed; and fearing the Lord should take notice under so many Intimations of his returning mercy, we should be found an Insensible people, as not standing before Him with Thanksgiving, as well as lading him with our Complaints in the time of pressing Afflictions:

The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his Goodness and Favour, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced, but we doubt not those who are sensible of God's Afflictions, have been as diligent to espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as a People offering Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council doth commend it to the Respective Ministers, Elders and people of this Jurisdiction; Solemnly and seriously to keep the same Beseeching that being persuaded by the mercies of God we may all, even this whole people offer up our bodies and souls as a living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus Christ.

Poem from A Ballad-maker's Pack, 1921, by Arthur Guiterman, 1871-1943

The First Thanksgiving Day
Boston, 1631

The curse of Cain was on the earth;
  The leaden heavens frowned;
The Winter closed with cruel dearth
  And gripped the fruitless ground.

Behind us rose the somber wood,
  Before us stretched the foam -
A thousand leagues of briny flood
  That sundered us from Home.

The meager mussel was our meat;
  We robbed the squirrel's hoard;
Our barren glebe beneath our feet,
  We cried upon the Lord.

"Arouse your souls against despair,"
  The godly Winthrop said,
"And chuse a day of fast and prayer;
  For surely, He who led

"Our wanderings across the wave
  Shall hear us when we plead,
And stretch a mighty arm to save
  His people in their need."

Behold! when all is bleak and drear
  And want assails the land,
How God delighteth to appear
  To work with wondrous hand!

For, even as we made to deal
  To one that hungered sore
The utmost handful of our meal,
  A shout arose from shore.

An hundred watching eyes descried
  Through Winter's misty pall
The good ship Lion breast the tide
  With provender for all.

Then joined the voice of first and least
  A hymn of thanks to raise;
Our day of Fasting changed to Feast
  And Prayer gave way to Praise.

So, once in every year we throng,
  Upon a day apart,
To praise the Lord with feast and song
  In thankfulness of heart.

Excerpt from "The Saving Grace of Gratitude" by Paula Rinehart

Gratitude brings us back to a mercy we cannot seem to exhaust. He is our home at the end of the world. The simple, recurring miracle that you and I belong to Jesus shapes a gratefulness that can carry us all our days. Or as the author of Hebrews says the very best: "Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire."

From Decision Magazine, November 5, 2010

Psalm 147:7-12

Sing unto the LORD with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God:

Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.

He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry.

He delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man.

The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy.

Praise the LORD, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Zion.

Prayer by John Baillie, 1886-1960

I praise thee for the life that stirs within me;
I praise thee for the bright and beautiful world in to which I go;
I praise thee for earth and sea and sky,
For scudding cloud and singing bird;
I praise thee for the work thou has given me to do;
I praise thee for all that thou has given me to fill my leisure hours;
I praise thee for my friends;
I praise thee for music and books and good company
And all pure pleasures.

Prayer by Helen Waddell, 1889-1965

Father, we thank thee for our happiness:
for thy great gift of life: for the wonder and bloom of the world.
We bless thee that it takes a very little thing to make us happy,
yet so great a thing to satisfy us that only thyself canst do it,
for thou alone art greater than our hearts.

We bless thee for thy calling
which is so high that no man can perfectly attain unto it,
and for thy grace which stoops so low
that none of us can ever fall too low for it.

Above all we bless thee that thou didst send thy Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord,
for having seen him we have seen thee,
whose truth doth ever warm,
and whose grace doth ever keep.

King Henry VI, Part II. Act I, scene i by William Shakespeare

O Lord, that lends me life,
Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!

Gratefulnesse by George Herbert, 1593-1633

Thou, that hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more: a grateful heart.
See how thy beggar works on thee
By art.

He makes thy gifts occasion more,
And says, If he in this be crossed,
All thou hast given him heretofore
Is lost.

But thou didst reckon, when at first
Thy word our hearts and hands did crave,
What it would come to at the worst
To save.

Perpetual knockings at thy door,
Tears sullying thy transparent rooms,
Gift upon gift, much would have more,
And comes.

This not withstanding, thou wentst on
And didst allow us all our noise:
Nay thou hast made a sigh and groan
Thy joys.

Not that thou hast not still above
Much better tunes, than groans can make;
But that these country-airs thy love
Did take.

Wherefore, I cry, and cry again;
And in no quiet canst thou be,
Till I a thankful heart obtain
Of thee.

Not thankful when it pleaseth me;
As if Thy blessings had spare days:
But such a heart whose pulse may be
Thy praise.

Psalm 100

Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.

Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.

Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

Orthodox prayer of thanksgiving after deliverance from trouble

Almighty and merciful God, I most humbly and heartily thank Your divine majesty for Your loving kindness and tender mercies, that You have heard my humble prayer, and graciously granted me deliverance from my trouble and misery. I pray to you to continue granting Your helping grace, that I may lead a life pleasing to You, ever remembering Your mercies, and the blessings You have undeservedly bestowed upon me, that I may continually offer to You the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.