Luther High School South-Chicago, IL
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”-Colossians 2:6-7
“Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.”- Henry Ward Beecher
It’s Wednesday, November 27, 1968. Bushel baskets and bags of food are lined up in front of the grand piano, wheeled into the gym from the choir/band room for Luther High School South’s Thanksgiving service. South’s original electronic pipe organ recently had played its last note. A new Allen organ was on order. Recent technological advances would enable the Allen to produce a decidedly authentic church pipe organ sound. Amazingly- and a preposterous notion in 1968, thirty-three years later that same Allen organ would play a most memorable service of thanksgiving and celebration- for fifty years of Christian education at Luther South.
November 27, 1968 was a day for students and staff to give thanks for God’s past, present, and future provision. A ministry downsizing or vocation loss, however, places severe strain on our resolve to give thanks at all times and in all circumstances. Pastor Jeff Manion (The Land Between) encourages us to remember that God loves to provide exactly what we need at exactly the right moment. Providing is what God does. British pastor and author Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), once explained how, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are able to live a life of thanksliving in response to God’s blessings:
“I think that is a better thing than thanksgiving: thanksliving. How is this to be done? By a general cheerfulness of manner, by an obedience to the command of Him by whose mercy we live, by a perpetual, constant delighting of ourselves in the Lord, and by a submission of our desires to His will.”
God knows what we need and how He’ll provide it. He has provided in the past, is sustaining us now, and will continue to do so.
“All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given,
The Son, and Him who reigns with them in highest heaven,
The one eternal God, whom earth and heaven adore,
For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.”
