Ministering Sisters

            Every fourth Thursday of November, American families gather to eat turkey and watch football. The holiday is called Thanksgiving. The prevailing reason for Thanksgiving is to remember the Pilgrims’ feast after their plentiful harvest of 1621. But the first and sixteenth presidents of the United States declared a loftier purpose for the holiday.             President George Washington issued a proclamation in November 1789. He declared a day of “public thanksgiving and prayer” devoted to “the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be” (See heritage.org/washingtons-thanksgiving-proclamation ).             In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday. In his proclamation, he expressed gratitude for: “the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies”; the population increase and...

            Giving thanks is a commandment: “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God: (Thessalonians 5:18). “Give thanks in all things” (Mosiah 26:39). “Receive it from the hand of the Lord, with a thankful heart in all things” (D&C 62:7). As with every commandment, ripple effects bless the obedient physically and spiritually. They accrue in the present and in the future.   “Father, thy children to thee now raise Glad, grateful songs for thy love and grace” (Hymns, 91).             The addiction recovery manual emphasizes the importance of keeping a daily gratitude journal, calling it “a powerful tool.” Individuals who keep a gratitude journal find it easier to identify evidences of the hand of the Lord in their lives. The manual explains that keeping a gratitude journal is more than making a list of blessings received. It becomes a compilation of “self-expression and appraisal…. of thoughts and ...