November 2024
The hours of daylight are shorter, and the cooler temperatures remind us winter is ahead. It’s November, and we’ve now reached the time of year in which many people try to take things a bit slower and reflect on the upcoming holiday season, continue traditions begun years ago, and recall fond memories of time spent with family.
If you think back to your elementary school history lessons, you may recall the first Thanksgiving was held in 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. At that time, colonists from England and the Wampanoag people gathered to share an autumn harvest feast. Various celebrations of thankfulness were held throughout our newly developing country for the next two centuries, until Abraham Lincoln officially declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in the United States in 1863.
Traditionally, the Thanksgiving holiday (and the days and weeks surrounding it) has been a time to give thanks to God for all He has done: providing the rain to bring forth a harvest; keeping our family healthy throughout the year; restoring health after an extended illness; bringing a new job or new friendship into our lives; guiding us through a troubling situation; or the continued joy of the gift of our individual community of family, friends, neighbors, and church family surrounding and supporting us.
Despite life’s sadnesses and the difficult circumstances we each encounter on an ongoing basis, there are so many things for which to be thankful. The Lord has blessed us all richly.
For this month’s ministry theme, we asked Pastor Bill Yonker to share some thoughts about thankfulness and gratitude. Pastor Yonker is the Senior Pastor at Immanuel Lutheran Church in East Dundee, Illinois. He has served at Immanuel for 30 years.
Colossians 2:6-7 is a selection from scripture Pastor Yonker would consider to be a “go-to” in reference to thankfulness for God’s many gifts: So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
When asked what the words “gratitude” and “thankfulness” mean, Pastor Yonker replied, “Gratitude and thankfulness are an attitude, followed by actions, leading to a lifestyle. Because ‘every good and perfect thing comes from our heavenly Father’ and because ‘his mercies are new every morning,’ I try to offer thanks regularly and often and also to live in the actions, posture, and attitude of gratitude.”
Pastor Yonker is thankful to the Lord for many blessings in his own personal life, including knowing Jesus’ love and forgiveness, acceptance and welcome into His family through Jesus, in addition to having a devoted-to-Jesus wife, children, and grandchildren.
He is grateful to be a part of a congregation in a church body that steadfastly adheres to the inerrant,
infallible, inspired Word of God and our Lutheran Confessions. He appreciates having colleagues in agreement and fellowship with this true understanding. He also added that he is thankful for the LCMS Northern Illinois District leadership as we are collectively “guided and led by Bible-based confessional people who both understand our mission and promote it.”
In regard to how he responds in thankfulness and gratitude for all of those things listed above, he explained that he expresses gratitude to the Lord through personal prayer, but that he also certainly tries to follow through by offering physical means of support for the one(s) for whom, and to whom, he is grateful – offering help, love, and support in response to the blessings he has been given.
Pastor Yonker also mentioned that some of the best encouragement offered to him is from the explanation to the first article of the Apostle’s Creed in Luther’s Small Catechism: “All this He does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him.” Indeed, everything we have been given is from the Lord. We have not and cannot do anything to earn or deserve any of those blessings. We can only respond with thankfulness and praise.
Thanks be to God for all of our blessings received on a daily basis. We give thanks for our District’s dedicated pastors, teachers, DCEs, and others, serving the Church and serving the people of the many communities of the Northern Illinois District. We are grateful for faithful congregants who bring up their children and grandchildren in the faith and share the love of Jesus with those around them through their words and deeds. We are humbled by the Lord’s gift of grace and salvation offered to each of us through the death and resurrection of His Son. May we each live in gratitude for all these things throughout this particular season of thanksgiving and in each day of our lives.
