Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The text on which this morning's message is based comes from our Epistle lesson (1 Timothy 2: 1ff).

Back during the dark days after 1929, a group of ministers in the Northeast gathered to discuss how they should conduct their Thanksgiving Sunday services. Things were about as bad as they could get, with no sign of relief. The bread lines were depressingly long, unemployment higher than it had even been, the stock market had plummeted, and the term Great Depression seemed an apt description for the mood of the country. The ministers thought they should only lightly touch upon the subject of Thanksgiving in deference to the human misery all about them. After all, what was there to be thankful for? But it was Dr. William L. Stiger, pastor of a large congregation in the city that rallied the group. This was not the time, he suggested, to give mere passing mention to Thanksgiving, just the opposite. This was the time for the church to get matters in perspective and thank God for blessings always present, but perhaps suppressed due to intense hardship. I suggest to you the ministers struck upon something. The most intense moments of thankfulness are not found in times of plenty, but when difficulties abound. Think of the Pilgrims that first Thanksgiving. Half their number dead, people without a country, but still there was thanksgiving to God. Their gratitude was not for something but in someone. (modified from e-sermons.com)

It was that same sense of gratitude that lead Abraham Lincoln to formally establish the first Thanksgiving Day in the midst of national civil war, the most catastrophic war this country has ever known. The very nation struggled for survival. Perhaps there is in your own life, right now, intense hardship. You are experiencing your own personal Great Depression. Why should you be thankful this day?

Paul wrote: "I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone�. This is good, and pleases God our Savior,

4 who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all."

In our Old Testament lesson, the Lord had called upon the Israelites to remember the blessings that he had rained down on his people for 40 years in the desert. He called upon them to trust in his promises to bring them into the Promised Land, and to praise and thank him when they had received those promises.

Tonight we can remember the ultimate promises our Lord has rained down upon us in Jesus Christ. This may not have been a wonderful year of earthly blessings for you. I hope it was, but for many it has not been. But then again, just simply living in this country is a wondrous blessing we often overlook. In last night's newspaper our county agent who recently visited Africa noted that most of us in America are so blessed that we live like royalty in comparison to those around the world. But regardless of your earthly situation, rich or poor, your spiritual situation is blessed if you are in Christ Jesus our Lord. He came down to a world, hopeless and hapless, and gave himself as a ransom for you. Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human, came here to be the mediator between perfect God and sinful man. Thanks be to God, he came down to earth so that He might give to us a good and perfect eternal land, away from the death and despair of this life. During the time of the Pilgrims coming to America and having the first Thanksgiving, Martin Rinkart wrote the hymn "Now Thank We all our God" that we just sang.

Rinkart was a Lutheran minister in the town of Eilenburg, Germany. He was the son of a poor coppersmith, but somehow, he managed to work his way through an education. Finally, in the year 1617, he was offered the post of pastor in his hometown parish.

A year later, what has come to be known as the Thirty-Years-War broke out, one of the most devastating wars of history. Imagine the devastation of our own U.S. Civil war lasting for 26 extra years. Rinkart's town was caught right in the middle. Thousands of people crammed inside of it for protection, because his town had a big wall around it.

Despite the wall, Eilenberg was sacked three different times by two different armies. Because of the wall and overcrowding, conditions inside the city deteriorated. Adequate sanitation was lacking. Medical supplies were scarce. Food and water became contaminated.

As a result, a massive plague that swept across Europe hit Eilenburg worse than the armies did. � At one point people were dying at the rate of fifty a day. In all, over 8,000 people died, including Martin's own wife. The man called upon to bury more than 4000 of them was Rev. Martin Rinkert, the only clergyman for several years. His labors finally came to an end in 1648, just one year after the conclusion of the war. His ministry spanned 32 years, all but the first and the last overwhelmed by the great conflict that engulfed his town. Tough circumstances in which to be thankful. And yet in a deep faith in Christ he wrote these words: Now thank we all our God With heart and hands and voices; Who wondrous things hath done, In whom his world rejoices. Who from our mothers' arms Has blest us on our way. With countless gifts of love And still is ours today. (Rinkart's lifestory taken from numerous sources, most notably Lutheran Worship Hymnal Companion by F. Precht)

Rinkart's life knew very few earthly blessings. But yet, through God's Word, he knew the wondrous things God had done for him in Christ Jesus, the countless gifts of love that God our Savior had rained down upon him. May we this Thanksgiving day remember the same and respond to Him with thanks and praise. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4: 7)