It doesn’t take a national declaration for us to give thanks. Sometimes it takes a little desperation. In 1620 when the Pilgrims stepped off the Mayflower at Provincetown in Cape Cod, they were more than 220 miles off course. They had planned to land at the mouth of the Hudson River in what is now New York, but bad weather changed their plans. After spending 66 days at sea and experiencing nearly every imaginable hazard, they knew their survival was more than a matter of blind fate.
Desperate for Land
No one had to tell these landsick Pilgrims to give thanks. William Bradford, who would become the new colony’s governor, described the exhilarating experience of finally making landfall in his book, Of Plymouth Plantation, “Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof.”
Thanksgiving was a natural response to the Pilgrims’ personal experience of God’s provision in their lives. That provision continued as their history-making adventure unfolded.
Weeks into their settlement of Provincetown, a dispute arose between the Pilgrims and the Nauset tribe of Native Americans. This led the Pilgrims to find a different location for their colony, so they set sail for Plymouth. Upon their arrival in December 1620, they found an abandoned Native-American village called Patuxet. A few years earlier, all the Native Americans there had either died of disease or left the village, leaving behind their cornfields and space cleared for living quarters.
It was the perfect place for the Pilgrims to set up their colony. But they would have to survive the winter first.
They almost didn’t make it.
Desperate for Survival
“In two or three months’ time half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of the winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases which this long voyage and their inaccommodate condition had brought upon them. So there died sometimes two or three a day in the foresaid time, that of 100 and odd persons, scarce fifty remained.”
Of Plymouth Plantation
With death at their doorstep, the Pilgrims were again in a desperate situation. If they didn’t get help soon, they all would perish.
An unexpected blessing came in March of 1621, when the Pilgrims met an Abenaki Indian named Samoset. He introduced the Pilgrims to Chief Massasoit, leader of the Wampanoag Indians. Massasoit brought his English-speaking slave Squanto, the only surviving Patuxet native, to meet them. (Squanto survived the disease which had killed his people because he had been captured, brought to Europe and enslaved a few years earlier.)
When he met the Pilgrims, Chief Massasoit was also desperate for help. His tribe had been fighting the hostile Narragansett tribe, and needed a military ally. The meeting occurred at the precise moment each group realized it needed the other. Had they met any sooner or later, it’s likely the Pilgrims would not have been welcomed.
This unlikely meeting resulted in an unlikely treaty and created unlikely friends. The Pilgrims agreed to provide military assistance to the Wampanoags in exchange for wilderness survival training, and the rest is history. Squanto taught the Pilgrims everything they needed to have a stable food supply. As a result, their crops flourished. Their needs were met. They survived.
And they celebrated. Wouldn’t you?
After all of the perils they had endured, thanksgiving was an easy choice. They understood as Abraham Lincoln declared more than 200 years later, “No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God.”
Desperate for Hope
Today we are more than 400 years removed from the desperate circumstances which led to the first Thanksgiving. Life is generally good for us. Because we know little of the desperation our forefathers experienced, gratitude quickly takes a back seat to the festivities of the holiday season.
It isn’t that we aren’t desperate. Our problem is we don’t realize our desperation because our comforts have lulled us to sleep.
The good news is God has offered Himself as the Provision for our desperation. Jesus came to free us from the sin which threatens our peace and comes between us and God. Through His sacrificial death on the cross and resurrection, our sins can be forgiven and we can experience peace with God.
The same God who can deliver you from the desperation of your sin can intervene in the most hopeless of situations. Go ahead and acknowledge your need to Him. You’ll see firsthand the abundance of His provision. And I pray that will lead you to thanksgiving.
Article by Cam Edwards
You may relate to the Pilgrims’ experience in your church. Here’s how to thrive in your desperation.
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