Ah, Thanksgiving!  Don’t you love the decorations for this season?  All the lovely leaves, and pumpkins, and bounty of the harvest, the turkey, the corn.  And, of course, the pilgrims.  There they stand, Ma and Pa Pilgrim, looking fresh and clean, collar and cap snowy white, all neat as a pin, round and rosy.  Pictures of The First Thanksgiving nearly invariably show a collection of such pilgrims, with a few smiling, boisterous children running around, all happy and satisfied with an overflowing abundance of bounty piled around.  Gives ya the “warm fuzzies” all over, doesn’t it?

Only problem is, it’s fake.  The real story isn’t picturesque.  Most of us remember from our school days that the pilgrims came over on the Mayflower, but do you know how big the ship actually was?  We think “ship” and imagine an “ocean liner”, or at least a small cruise ship.  Try one hundred feet long and twenty-five feet wide!  In other words, you could fit EIGHTEEN of them on a football field.  And those are the outside dimensions, not the actual floor space in the hold where the passengers lived.  There were one hundred and two  passengers (and thirty crew members) on that tiny vessel.  That many people in that little space?  Ugh.  The journey actually had a couple of false starts, as there were originally to be TWO ships going.  They finally had to give up on the other ship being fixed, and set out with just the one, much later than anticipated.  The crossing took two months, the first not too bad, but the second full of nearly continual Atlantic storms.  No Carnival cruise!  The damp and the stench would have been overwhelming and the food was miserable.

But all journey come to an end, right?  So did this one.  They arrived on the East coast in on November 11, but it took time to find a suitable settlement spot.  They landed at what became the Plymouth Colony on Dec. 6.  (Some of the passengers had now been on board for SIX months!) Great time to start a new colony, right at the beginning of winter, huh?  They began building the settlement, but inclement weather and the generally poor condition of the immigrants meant that only seven of the intended nineteen buildings got done.  One hundred people (two died in the crossing) in seven buildings.

With poor shelter and poor diet, in the teeth of a ferocious Northern winter, it’s no wonder that starvation and illness took a heavy toll.  By spring, only fifty-three of the original passengers were still alive.  That’s just over half – only four of which were adult women, and many were children.  That’s just “alive”, too, not necessarily healthy enough to do the work of building or planting – or perhaps to survive another winter.  The Mayflower had sailed for England in April; they had no way of knowing when – or, indeed, even IF – other settlers and supplies would be coming.

Think about all this!  They left England sure of God’s leading, convinced of the necessity of the voyage, with visions of a new land where they could be free from the Church of England’s rule.  (They came for the freedom to establish their OWN “religiocracy”, of course, not “freedom of religion” as so often taught.  But I digress…)  Think about how it must have felt, then, to have all these things go so terribly “wrong”.  Ever been there?  “God, I followed your leading, and look what a mess You’ve gotten me into!”

Yet, they chose to celebrate that first harvest the next October.  They were undoubtedly a motley looking crew.  Many probably still were somewhat haggard or bore the marks of their great suffering.  The state of wear of the clothing was likely pretty shabby.  For all, it would have been a bitter-sweet celebration as they thought of all those who hadn’t made it that far and all the dreams that hadn’t come true.  There was no way for them to be sure the crop would be sufficient for the coming winter if that winter was even worse than the previous.  They didn’t know how many of them would still be alive by the next harvest.  Maybe because death and hardship were just so much a part of life then, maybe because their entire religious outlook was different and they expected life to be a “vale of tears”, or simply because their faith was strong, in the face of horrendous suffering, they were still thankful for what God had given them in that harvest.

I wonder if we modern American Christians, put in the same circumstances, would be thankful.  It’s easy to celebrate and give thanks when our lives look like that stereotypical Thanksgiving tableau.  When we have more than we need, and life is good, and everyone’s happy, and the sun is shining, it’s easy to be thankful.  That’s where the rubber meets the road, though, isn’t it?  We are to give thanks in all circumstances.  When the harvest is bountiful, and when the crops fail.  When our loved ones are gathered around us, and when there are empty chairs at the table.  When events have turned out just as great as we envisioned, and when all our dreams turn to dust.

No matter what your circumstances are this day, I hope that you are able to give thanks.  God is still good.  He is still faithful.  He will never leave us or forsake us.  This world is not our home.  As Mark Driscoll put it in a sermon, this world is as close to Hell as a Christian will ever get – and here, we STILL have God’s presence with us.  If that is not a cause for giving thanks, I don’t know what is!

A blessed Thanksgiving to you all!