Every year about this time, I’m writing about the recent chaos or catastrophe in our nation as the backdrop for a heart of gratitude and thanksgiving. It’s no different this year. We haven’t landed on a sea of calm yet, and I’m fairly certain we never will. The first noted three-day feast in the 1600s — Pilgrims fellowshipping with the Native Americans — came after unimaginable suffering, starvation and loss of life.

Abraham Lincoln in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, established Thanksgiving as a national holiday.  For two more bloody years, the war would rage as our nation was torn apart. Ironically, 152 years after that war ended, we’re still responding as if it is present-tense. Between the demise of the heart of man and the powerful force of nature, we’ve consistently found ourselves in a state of uncertainty and tribulation this year.

Maybe that’s exactly why we clamor for a day when a Norman Rockwell scene can come to fruition at our linen-clothed tables. We really desire a sense of belonging, calm and hope. History has proved that rarely is the case for any sustained nation for very long — same for a household, same for a single life. No one is immune to tragedy. But it is out of the ash heap that we rise with greater strength and a fiercer determination.

Most thankful
In all the years I’ve partaken in pre-feast “tell us what you’re most thankful for” moments, I’ve never heard anyone talk about their home, car, vacation or bank account. When it’s all pared down, we, like those early settlers, respond similarly. “I’m thankful I’m here, able to enjoy those whom I love.”

We appreciate our freedom, faith and our families. Only when it is tested do we actually realize just how much we want and desire something so centrally core to our beings. What we want has never really changed much. Amid the current strife is a longing for the dust to settle, anxieties to cease and peace to unfold in our daily lives.

Maybe the greatest shift hasn’t come in what we desire but rather where our gratitude is placed. And perhaps we would find ourselves less lacking if we offered thanks to whom and where thanks is due.

Holiday proclamation
Lincoln’s mandate is still relevant today: “I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union.”

McClain writes from Greenwood, Ind.