God is great, God is good ...

Thanksgiving 1963 was no fun. No amount of turkey and pumpkin pie could remove the deep, down empty feeling many people felt, especially me, after the assassination of President John Kennedy. He was gunned down on Friday, Nov. 22, while parading through Dallas, Texas on a motorcade.
Thanksgiving that year was the following Thursday.

He was the first president of my significant memory, remembering his inauguration shown on a television set in the lunchroom at my elementary school.

Then, three years later, while attending physiology class in high school, the principal’s office had allowed the news to be carried to individual classrooms. First, the news that the President had been shot.

Then, not much later, the news that the President was dead. Classes were called off for the rest of the day and I went home to a solemn, strange silence. The three television stations had cancelled all regular programming. Concerts, games of all sorts were cancelled. The nation gathered together in stunned silence for four days.

For me and millions more, despite the continuing revelations of Kennedy’s affairs, Camelot died. We didn’t even know what Camelot was, but we knew the excitement of a young, dynamic, powerful speaker and leader was gone. I mourned in my room by myself. Not that the world had come to an end, but that my country had been shattered and humbled.

The Kennedy assassination was the first time this people of 200,000,000 had come together for a town hall mourning, young and old alike. They say that that day was to my generation as Dec. 7, 1941 was to my father’s generation and Sept. 11, 2001 was to our children’s generation.

But here was something common in all three tragic events: we all turned to God. God became a refuge in a time of trouble. He always is.

Thanksgiving is a day dedicated to God. Its first emergence, we believe, came after a winter of death and near starvation for the Pilgrim colony.

People felt that they needed to give God thanks for survival and life.

Thanksgiving 1963 we gave thanks for a God of life and survival: the phrase in England is, “The King is dead; God save the King.” We may have lost a lot, but we still live and survive and deep down we know God is at work. We don’t really understand 9/11 and 11/22 and 12/7, but we turn to God regardless.

In 2006 we had love ones to die. But we still have much for which to be thankful. And that’s what we do. God is great; God is good; let us thank him for our food, clothing, shelter, memories of loved ones, presidents, and so much more.