Now Thank We All

The Songs and Hymns of Thanksgiving

November 12, 2014

We sing at Christmas.  In fact, we sing so much at Christmas that we call the songs we sing at Christmas by a special name;  they are "carols."  Are there any "Thanksgiving carols"?  I don't think so.  For years there have been just a few hymns  that we sing in church at Thanksgiving time:
Now thank we all our God
Come, ye thankful people, come
Count  your blessings
We gather together
Somehow we just don't sing at Thanksgiving the way we do at Christmas.  Do all the stores in the mall play Thanksgiving melodies?    I don't think so.  They skip ahead to Christmas carols right after Halloween--maybe before.  Even the secular songs written as Thanksgiving songs tend to get mixed up with Christmas.  For example there is Bing Crosby singing "When I'm worried and I can't sleep, I count my blessings instead of sheep." It is a song of Thanksgiving but it is in his album titled "The Voice of Christmas."  Or there is Lydia Maria Child's wonderful poem she wrote as part of a piece called "A Boy's Thanksgiving" way back in 1844.  We know it better as the song it became when someone set it to music, "Over the river and through the woods to Grandfather's (sic) house we go," but, because it has a sleigh and snow, some verses have been added to the poem to make it relate to Christmas.   In the same way the song that describes a young man's ride with Miss Fanny Bright in a one-horse open sleigh--which originally had nothing to do with Christmas--is now firmly embedded in our December repertoire as "Jingle Bells."  So a lot of songs that the malls could have used as Thanksgiving background music have drifted over to Christmas.
Maybe we don't sing at Thanksgiving because there is no biblical story involved like the story of Bethlehem and the manger. Thanksgiving is not a biblical holiday--at least not in the New Testament.  We'll spend some time later thinking about the roots of our Thanksgiving holiday in a Jewish festival,  but it is well known that our pilgrim ancestors celebrated the first Thanksgiving in 1621 and every President since Washington has called upon the nation to set aside a time for thanksgiving  even when times were very hard.   The day almost feels like a religious holiday like Christmas and Easter but it isn't.  And we don't sing our thanks like we sing about angels bending near the earth.  I don't think we will change the way we do Thanksgiving, but--at least in our church--we have a new hymnal and a new set of Thanksgiving hymns to sing if we want to.   Some of the Thanksgiving hymns in our new hymnal will be new to us, but the tunes to which they are sung are mostly familiar ones. Before we look at the hymns we can use to express our Thanksgiving, let's explore the new hymnal so we can make the best use of it.

Celebrating Grace Hymnal

Hymns are poetry set to music.  Most of us will only use the hymnal as we worship in the sanctuary, but those who do devotionals or teach Bible Study classes will find the hymnal to be a rich resource of poems to be used.  Great hymns have become great because of their beautiful language and ideas that inspire us.  The poets have a way with words that many of us can't match--but we can use their elegant words.  For example, in one of the Thanksgiving hymns there is a beautiful treatment of God's love for us:
                    "Because your love has touched me,
                      I have love to give away;
                     Now the bread of love is rising,
                     Loaves of love to multiply!"
There are three good ways any of us can make use of the hymnal for our private meditation or for use in teaching.  First, the hymnal is organized around the two basic elements of our covenant relationship with the LORD.   The first section is all about God who promised Israel "I Will Be Your God" (Exodus 6:7).  Here we find hymns (poems) that deal with God as creator, revealer, redeemer and sustainer and also hymns for use organized by the seasons of the Church Year such as Advent and Easter.  The second section of the hymnal focuses on how we will be God's worshipping and serving people, "You Shall Be My People."  Hymns in this section are grouped by theme and a group of hymns related to one broad subject can be identified quickly.    The second way to use the hymnal is to go to the "Topical Index of Hymns" beginning on page 738. Here hymns are grouped by theme as well, but there are many more categories to help us find just the right hymn to use.  The third tool that can make the hymns more accessible to us for use in devotional or teaching settings is the  "Index of Scriptural Bases of Hymns" (page 737).  If we are looking for some inspiration about a specific biblical passage this index will show us which hymns are based on the passage or book we are using.  This by no means exhausts the resources of our hymnal but these are some ways all of us can benefit from it.

Thanks to our Creator

In a very real sense, this planet on which we live is the "habitat for humanity."  Ours may not be the only planet in the heavens that was created for life as we know it--it's beginning to look as if it may not be--but this blue globe held in place by all kinds of unseen and, for most of us, unfathomable forces is a wonderful world.  From the looks of the dinosaur bones in the natural history museums there may have been a time before we came along when this earth was a very inhospitable place, and it is quite possible that it will be an uncomfortable place at some point in the future.  But for now, we can give thanks from the depth of our hearts for this beautiful planet with all of its creatures.  Even the secular thanksgiving songs express this thanksgiving for God's creation as Louis Armstrong taught us singing "It's a Wonderful World."
                    I see trees of green,
                    red roses too.
                    I see them bloom,
                    for me and you.
                    And I think to myself,
                    what a wonderful world.
Our new hymnal retains some of the old favorites  that we have sung from every hymnal we have ever used like the seventeenth century Now Thank We All Our God,   Come Ye Thankful People Come and  the 1970 hymn, For the Fruit of All Creation, by a British poet, Fred Pratt Green, which may not be as familiar as the first two.   In its first and last stanzas the hymn thanks God for the physical and spiritual blessings our Creator provides us.  In the middle stanza, Mr. Green "reminds us that thanksgiving must also be shown in our deeds of sharing God's bounty with those in need. Although the text is a modern one, it expresses the same message as [that of] the Old Testament prophets: offerings of thanksgiving are acceptable to God only if 'the orphans and the widows' have received loving care (see Isa. 1:10-17; Amos 5:21-24; Micah 6:6-8)."  The text is set to the lovely tune often used for lullabies, "All Through The Night" (In the original Welsh:  Ar hyd y nos).
                    For the fruit of all creation,
                    Thanks be to God.
                    For His gifts to ev'ry nation,
                    Thanks be to God.
                    For the plowing, sowing, reaping,
                    Silent growth while we are sleeping,
                    Future needs in earth's safe-keeping,
                    Thanks be to God.

                     In the just reward of labor,
                     God's will is done.
                     In the help we give our neighbor,
                     God's will is done.
                     In our world-wide task of caring
                     For the hungry and despairing,
                     In the harvests we are sharing,
                     God's will is done.

                      For the harvests of the Spirit,
                      Thanks be to God.
                      For the good we all inherit,
                      Thanks be to God.
                      For the wonders that astound us,
                      For the truths that still confound us,
                      Most of all, that love has found us,
                      Thanks be to God.

      Another hymn that calls on us to be thankful for our created world is #379, Let All Things Now Living.  The hymn begins with a call for all things now living to raise a song of thanksgiving to God the creator and it brings back this theme in its last stanza which looks forward to the time when "all things now living unite in thanksgiving."  In the lovely second stanza the poet, Katherine Davis, touches on the order God has ordained for his universe as something for which we can be grateful:
                      His law he enforces, the stars in their courses
                      And sun in its orbit obediently shine;
                      The hills and the mountains, the rivers and fountains,
                      The deeps of the ocean proclaim him divine.
                      We too should be voicing our love and rejoicing;
                      With glad adoration a song let us raise.

Thanks for The Created

That eminent theologian, Julie Andrews, reminded us  that we all have "favorite things" for which we are grateful even if we don't actually say "thank you" for them:
                      Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
                      Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
                      Brown paper packages tied up with strings
                      These are a few of my favorite things.
Some of our thanksgiving hymns also mention the specific things within our created world for which we are grateful.  One of these hymns is #374, I Thank You Lord For Each New Day  which begins its list of favorite things with:
                       meadows white with dew,
                       the sun's warm hand upon the earth
                       skies of endless blue
                       fruit and flower, lamb and leaf   and
                       every bird that sings
The second stanza expresses gratitude
"for every daisy's lifted face,
for every lovely tune,
for winter's white, for autumn's gold,
for harvest and for home..."

Thanks for Meaning

One of the hymns in our new hymnal that stands out from the rest calls us to thank God for the past, present and future.  The first line of the hymn-which becomes its title- is a little misleading because it asks What Gift Can We Bring, What Present, What Token? (#533).  It sounds like the title of a Christmas hymn like the little drummer boy:
                       Come they told me
                       A new born King to see
                       Our finest gifts we bring
                       To lay before the king
                       So to honor Him
                       When we come.
It isn't, however, a Christmas hymn. The "gifts" that we bring are our thanks:
               Give thanks for the past, for those who had vision,
                       who planted and watered so dreams could come true.
                       Give thanks for the now, for study, for worship,
                       for mission that bids us turn prayer into deed.
                       Give thanks for tomorrow, full of surprises,
                       for knowing whatever tomorrow may bring …
                       we rest in God's keeping and live in God's love.
As you can see, our gift is thanksgiving for being given a meaningful service to our Lord and our world, for "mission that bids us turn prayer into deed."
Another hymn that stresses our "gift" to God is # 670 Take My Gifts and Let Me Love You.  In the first stanza the hymn writer asks the "God who first of all loved me" to "take my gifts."  When we sing this verse we confess that because your love has touched me,
                        I have love to give away;
                        now the bread of love is rising
                        loaves of love to multiply.
In the third stanza the hymn has us pray that God will take even the gifts we don't have yet, skills and talents that we do not yet know we have:
Take whatever I can offer--
gifts that I have yet to find,
skills that I am slow to sharpen,
talents of the hand and mind.
Surely our hymn writer has given us a prayer we can each pray sincerely--we need to ask God to use more of us than we know is in us today.
And finally, our hymnal includes in the Thanksgiving index a hymn that does not use the word "thank" or "praise."  God of the Fertile Fields (#668) stresses our role as stewards of God's creation.  The God of the fertile fields is the one from whose "bounteous hand come gifts your love has planned, that all in every land be clothed and fed."  The hymn confesses "We would be stewards true" and prays "Let all our toil be used, no gift abused, no humble task refused."  It is not enough just to give thanks for the abundance with which we have been blessed--at least not until our brothers and sisters around this globe have enough.  In the same vein, God Whose Giving Knows No Ending (# 671) prays:
                       Now direct our daily labor,
                       lest we strive for self alone.
                       Born with talents, make us servants
                       fit to answer at your throne. ...

                       Open wide our hands in sharing,
                        as we heed Christ's ageless call,
                        healing, teaching, and reclaiming,
                        serving you by loving all.

Conclusion

Maybe we should adapt Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous sonnet to ask:

How do I thank thee?  Let me count the ways.

I thank Thee to the depth and breadth and height

my soul can reach when feeling out of sight

for the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I thank Thee to the level of everyday's

most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

…

I thank Thee with the breath,

smiles, tears, of all my life!  and, if You choose,

I shall but thank Thee better after death.