Bishop’s Message for Thanksgiving

Special Messages
thanksgiving sunset

+Bishop Dee Pederson

It is a gift to live in this beautiful part of God’s creation in Southwestern Minnesota. Throughout the year we get to see the changing of the seasons unfolding around us. From the time of the bright green early growth of crops in spring, to the lush fields of summer, and finally the golden time of fall and harvest, we are blessed to see the handiwork of our loving Creator around us.

Day by day, month by month, dedicated farmers here carry out their daily vocation so that a hungry world might be fed. This is godly labor. And we all get to witness how the words of this familiar hymn are actually an offering prayer to God:

Praise and Thanksgiving

1 Praise and thanksgiving, God, we would offer
for all things living, you have made good:
harvest of sown fields, fruits of the orchard,

hay from the mown fields, blossom and wood.

2 God, bless the labor we bring to serve you,
that with our neighbor we may be fed.
Sowing or tilling, we would work with you,

harvesting, milling for daily bread.

3 Father, providing food for your children,
by Wisdom's guiding teach us to share
one with another, so that, rejoicing

with us, all others may know your care.

4 Then will your blessing reach ev'ry people,
freely confessing your gracious hand.
Where you are reigning, no one will hunger;
your love sustaining showers the land.


'Praise and thanksgiving' by Albert F Bayly (1901-84) © 1988 Oxford University Press. Reproduced by permission. All rights reserved. Duplication in any form prohibited without permission or valid license from copyright administrator.

The text of this hymn was written by Albert F. Bayly (1901-1984), a Congregational minister, born in England. He wrote “Praise and Thanksgiving” to “meet the need for harvest thanksgiving hymns which reminded us that we can thank God rightly only if we are ready to do [God’s] will by sharing those gifts with others, so they can rejoice with us.” 1

This week, many of us will gather with family and friends and enjoy the abundance of Thanksgiving feasts. We will give thanks, as the Catechism says, that God provides “food and clothing, home and family, and all we need from day to day.” As we do, may we live out this beautiful prayer, that God will teach us to share so that all people might be blessed and rejoice to know God’s gracious care.

I am grateful to God for you and wish you a blessed Thanksgiving.

+ grace and peace,
Bp. Dee Pederson

 

1 Quoted in Stulken, Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship (1981), 466. Hymnal Companion the Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2010), 544. Augsburg Fortress.

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