Although Thanksgiving is an American holiday, not generally observed around the world, our readers outside the United States can join us in giving thanks to God at this season. For Americans Thanksgiving has great significance as once again we reflect on the rigors endured by our Pilgrim forebears and their gathering to thank God for an abundant harvest, one that would carry them through another winter.
Somehow our own good harvest this year leaves me with a nagging sense of dissatisfaction, perhaps even guilt, as I read about the millions of starving people who have fled from East Pakistan to India. Nor in the midst of the enjoyment of our own freedoms can I forget persecuted fellow-believers in the Soviet Union; or the apartheid conditions in South Africa and the problems for white Christians there, to which attention is drawn by Michael Cassidy’s essay in this issue. These are grim reminders of our sinful world, of evil conditions as yet uncorrected, but most of all of the multiplied millions of people who do not know the Saviour. Let our thanks to God be accompanied by the firm intention to speed the light of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ to all men everywhere.
Though we are removed by distance from our children and grandchildren this Thanksgiving, my wife’s heart and mine are bound to them by cords of love, strengthened by the knowledge that we have eternal as well as temporal relationships with them as common members of the body of Christ. Many of our readers will share a similar experience. To one and all we say, Happy Thanksgiving.
