Giving Thanks, Being Compassion

Today, we gather with our families and friends around tables filled with a bounty of food. If you are anything like me, you have your favorite Thanksgiving dishes that make Thanksgiving special for you. My personal favorite has been and probably always will be cornbread dressing, which should never be confused with or referred to as stuffing. There is also the mixed vegetable casserole, the fruit or pecan pies, the aromas of the turkey roasting in the oven, and the delight in finally being able to sit down the feast that has been cooking for most of the day.

It is a day in which we celebrate the gift of community and the compassion shown to early arrivals from the European continent. We give thanks for the ways that we are surrounded by loving people who shower us with compassion each and every day of our lives. We give thanks for the ways that we have gathered in community with one another and for the ways that God continues to share God’s compassion with us each and every day. We give thanks for the bounty of God’s creation and for the ways that compassion helps us to live flourishing lives.

Today, as we gather around our Thanksgiving tables, let us also take a moment to pray for those who are without. We have neighbors who are not gathering around a table filled with so much food. We have neighbors who are unable to find housing. We have neighbors who live on the precipice of humanity and who long for being seen as whole, as human, as worthy of love.

We have neighbors in this land who continue to feel invisible and ravaged by the powers of colonialism. Our indigenous siblings continue to fight for their lands, for their cultures, for their ways of life according to their tribal traditions, and to be seen as peoples who have much to teach us. We have neighbors who experience Thanksgiving as a day of lament and “a painful reminder of the devastating impact of European colonization on Indigenous people.” We have neighbors who want to be seen.

We have neighbors around the world who do not know peace in their towns and cities and villages. We have neighbors who are mourning the loss of a loved one because of the ravages of war. We have neighbors who yearn for peace.

We have neighbors.

Today, we give thanks for all that God is showering upon creation, and we are reminded of the compassion that Wampanoag showed to the earliest of European settlers after a successful harvest. We are reminded that compassion is another way of loving our neighbor: giving out of what we have so that others in this world may know of God’s love in their lives.

Let us pray.

Almighty and gracious Father, we give you thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them. Make us, we pray, faithful stewards of your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

In Christ,

Hunter+