Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Oct/78

Contributor - Peter de Jong

Title - Thanksgiving

Topic - Meditation

...... Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God Of my salvation." HABBAKUK 3: 18.

Again as a nation we will celebrate our national Thanksgiving Day on October 9th and thus we will thank God for the harvest which safely has been gathered in. Now for many a minister who serves an urban congregation it will not always be easy to make a sermon on the theme of harvest, for the simple reason that many of his parishioners don't have any idea about harvest any more. Bread you buy from the baker and potatoes in the supermarket. Yet both, urban and rural people, live from the fruit of the yearly harvest.

This past summer we were all worried (especially those living in rural areas) about the dry weather which seemed to persist. Our crops were just screaming for some water, but the rain did not seem to come and when it finally did come it was too late for many fields to yield an average crop. And so some farmers looked with dismay at their fields, knowing that it will hurt their pocketbooks this fall and winter.

And now we raise a question: (or does this question only belong to primitive people who follow some form of nature religion?) Does God have anything to do with rain or drought? Perhaps I am old-fashioned (although I know that rain and dry weather can be explained in terms of modern science) yet when I read my Bible then I see biblical saints wrestling with the problem of drought. I see a Habbakuk who imagines for himself a period of great trouble: No figs on the trees, no grapes on the vines; no olives to make oil, no grain in the field, no cattle in the stalls anymore; and all that because of a great drought or destruction by the Chaldees who robbed us of everything, so that there be nothing to eat anymore for us and our children. I see a Jeremiah wrestling with a word of God which came to him concerning a drought and I am stunned by the humiliation of that prayer of Jeremiah in chapter 14. And now I know that we can explain rain and drought in terms of natural causes and we can find prayers for rain somewhat primitive and yet imagine that no rain would fall for months or for a whole year (as we hear of at times in Eastern countries of Africa and India and where people starve of hunger) is it then not a blessing of God that there is a regularity of rain and dry weather? Doesn't that make us think of God's word spoken to Noah after the Flood?: "Never again will I destroy every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat summer and winter, day and night shall not cease" (Genesis 8 : 24). We still received rain this year and for many farmers it came in time and so there will be food on our tables this winter. There be reason enough for all of us to thank God again for all his benefits.

Habbakuk, however, reminds us that man shall not live by bread alone. He says: "Even if the fig tree would not blossom, and there be no ftuit on the vine and when the produce of oil fails, and the fields yield no food, and when the flocks be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls..... in other words when there is nothing to be thankful for anymore and life be almost impossible curse then God and die!" (as many would say.) Habbakuk, however, says, yet I will rejoice in the Lord." In which Lord? In some God of nature in whom pagans also believe? "No, but I will joy in the God of my salvation".

This year on Thanksgiving Day we may thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for his wondrous work of salvation. We may thank him for his victory over sin and death, in Jesus Christ. We may also thank him for the harvest: for the good food which will be on our table again this year

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