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| 11/17/2012 recording date. audio/video is 8 minutes takes a few minutes to load so be patient please. Or just read ahead. Also the following week it is air on utube on turtle30cshell channel. Just type in website name when you got to utube. The Thanksgiving Day Message Coming from turtle30cshell.com, I am your host Christina Farris This weeks message is on thanksgiving. This is one celebration that seems etched in our minds for years. Etched because we learn the history from others interpretations on TV in early childhood. We learn the history perhaps in our Sunday School class. Yet grade school one learns to trace their hand to make a turkey as will as the society history and reason for the celebration. Yet it is not enough to remember the first thanksgiving. For it is a time to celebrate the harvest. Celebration of the harvest has been in traditions for centuries. It was perhaps one the last or near last celebrations before the new year and was around even before Christ birth. We often think of Thanksgiving being American Holiday. Yet it is when we add the Thanksgiving Day Parade and shopping on black Friday it becomes a modern tradition. God is suppose to be in reign over our country and yet with thanksgiving day first and day of commerce following, it seems to have put things in perspective. Yet with all the shopping for the celebration and buying all the trimmings, one must think again where was the heart in the shopping. Right at our tummies. From the pies being made, to buying of the ingredients, thanksgiving day meal has become just as commercially about money then it has the celebration of the harvest and thanksgiving to God. Yet each of us is different and we make a choice how we celebrate. Pilgrims came to America in hopes of a new beginning and religious freedom. Though they had plenty land they understood not the culture or the people that lived there. Yet through famine and illness, the Indians were able to help the strange people who came from the sea on a huge floating canoe. They wore strange outfits and strange hats, built strange dwellings. Pilgrim’s planted crops and the Indians gather herbs, and other plants from their native habitat. Hunted meat and dried it for the winter ahead. Each group of people learning from each other. Lives being different, yet each subject to God almighty. We often think of Indians being savages, however the way man came across our nation grabbing land that Indians in their culture did not own. They felt it was important to preserve things in their native territories. Yet used the resources off the land. We think of this culture being primitive yet it had its own way of preserving life. Yet these two culture would clash across America for years because of the greed for land and wealth. Today’s message comes from Genesis 45 Genesis 45:6-15 KJV (6) For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest. (7) And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. (8) So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. (9) Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not: (10) And thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast: (11) And there will I nourish thee; for yet there are five years of famine; lest thou, and thy household, and all that thou hast, come to poverty. (12) And, behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you. (13) And ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that ye have seen; and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither. (14) And he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck, and wept; and Benjamin wept upon his neck. (15) Moreover he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them: and after that his brethren talked with him. Genesis 45 is the prosperity of Joseph after being cast away from his family. He increased in wealth after spending years in prison. A time of famine had come and there was no hope for Joseph brothers in Israel. They got low on food and knew if they did nothing soon that their family would starve. The went to their neighbor Egypt. And Egypt provide the gift of food through the food storage and reserves set up by their brother Joseph’s leadership. King of Egypt had dreams of a famine he could not interpret and Joseph interpreted the dreams for him. Because of this the king place Joseph over his storehouse to prepare for a great and terrible famine. For seven years they stored food and eight years later the famine came and no one could get a crop to grow, but prosperity continue because of the storehouse. Let us thank God for the storehouse, for the provision that come. For the great and wonderful gifts of God in terrible times. God provision is always great. God always puts us in the right place at the right time. God prepares for the harvest and if that harvest needs to last another 7 years it will do so. God’s preparation in the time of famine, is when his Word seems silent in our land. There seems to be no manna from heaven but the food store is still open from heaven. That we need to thank God for, for we nailed his son to the cross with our sin. His word came back to feed us first through the resurrection and then by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Harvest being picked through out the year. When the last time you thank God for your brother’s and sisters in Christ. Joseph was happy to see his brothers and heart rejoiced at seeing his youngest brother Benjamin. Sometimes it takes distance from love ones to bring them back together. Some come back for the harvest. For the fruit of the labor and to celebrate at seeing their loved ones again. May you have a blessed Thanksgiving Day. Enjoy the time of fellowship of friend and family, but remember to say thanks to God. Thank you Heavenly Father for the bounty of grace, patience, hope, faith and strength to last because of your sweet Spirit living in our hearts to keep us until the harvest of your kingdom. In Jesus precious name, Amen. |
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The Thanksgiving Day Message by Christina Farris is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.turtle30cshell.com.