Get tested for Coronavirus

Many people are planning to travel for Thanksgiving in spite of the warnings from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other scientists due to the pandemic and the danger of picking up the coronavirus or spreading it to the elderly and others with compromised immune systems. Today, Wednesday and Friday, the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH) is testing people for COVID-19 in the Cow Palace in Forest Park. On Tuesday afternoon, vehicles were lined up with people waiting to be tested. The hours will be today until 6 p.m., Wednesday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., said Conor Strain, an employee of the ISDH. Medical scientists say a negative tt may give a false sense of security and everyone is encouraged to stay home and the U.S. Surgeon General suggests outdoor gatherings of no more than 10 people, if families must gather together for Thanksgiving Day. Copyright Frank Phillips 2020. If you like what we are doing here, support this blog through Patreon.com.

A Thanksgiving message from Dr. Jim Burns

"He preached as a dying man to dying men.” Rev. John Burns’ congregation in Lawrence, Massachusetts, knew he was suffering from a fatal kidney disease and was in his last days on earth. “As the taper of life grew shorter, he preached the gospel with all the grace of novelty.” Captain Burns had survived Gettysburg and 27 other blood-soaked battles in the Civil War. Sickened by the sights of war, he became a minister “to make the world a better place.” But due to the kidney disease, he had just six years in the pulpit before feeling the sting of death. We celebrate Thanksgiving in all the diverse stings of life as well as death—and even in the grip of a viral plague. Whatever your situation may be this year, the Bible instructs us to “give thanks in all circumstances.” If mankind disappoints us, take heart in “the beauty of the earth and the glory of the skies…Lord of all, to thee we raise a hymn of grateful praise.” But the purest form of gratitude is forged in the crucible of adversity. James and Elizabeth Burns lost their two children to a frontier fever in the fall of 1805. Jane, age 3, died on September 25 and her brother Alexander, 1, ten days later. An uncle in the north of Ireland wrote a stoic letter of condolences to the young couple. “I am sorry to hear of the deaths of your children, but still I hope that you will submit to the Lord’s will and be thankful for every dispensation of his providence that He is pleased to send your way, that is to say the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” An ancestral cousin suffered similar grief, illness taking his daughter and granddaughter, both named Nancy. Yet his gratitude to God was strong enough to break through this bleak blanket of sorrow. He wrote: “The all-wise giver of every good bestows on his unworthy subjects the necessities and comforts of life, both spiritual and temporal. I feel at times that I should blush at my ingratitude.” Another couple with six children living in humble circumstances focused on the basics. “We thank God that we always have plenty to eat and clothes to wear. We are as happy and content as can be expected.” David Acheson, a neighbor in both Ireland and America, expressed gratitude to his parents for his upbringing. “When I reflect on the care you bestowed upon me, the pains you took to instruct my youth in virtuous things, I wonder how it is possible for children to ever be ungrateful to their parents.” Just a step beyond gratitude lies the need and opportunity for sharing. This need was clearly seen by a missionary cousin serving in India. “Righteousness has exalted our nation. God’s commands for us to better the world’s conditions are unmistakable. No man can live merely for himself nor can a nation.” Through any haze of hardship burns a ray of sunshine. But its promise will only be captured if we reflect on our bonds of kinship and friendship and both where we are and what we have. As a God-fearing nation, we rest on a bedrock of belief as well as a bountiful harvest. May we bow our heads and give thanks to our Creator and provider. May we never need to blush at our ingratitude. And may we instruct our youth in virtuous things. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- James F. Burns is a retired professor at the University of Florida.

We need Thanksgiving this year

Thanksgiving Day was born in hope. 
Abraham Lincoln declared the first Thanksgiving Day in 1863, in the midst of division and national anemia. Anemia brought on by loss of blood as American killed American during the Civil War, also known as the War Between the States.
Give thanks? By national edict? Signed into law by a President largely unpopular by people in the North and  the South?
That was a time when hope needed to supercede hopelessness.
In the next month many of us will do things to benefit others. To help feed the hunger, to provide toys for needy children, to just sing praises to the Christ of Christmas.
Why?
Because we hope the future will be better, just like the Americans hoped the country of the 1870s and beyond would be better than the United States of the 1860s.

This week I attended a holiday memorial service for anyone who has lost loved ones in the past year or two. Susie French told those present that thanksgiving can lead to a positive mindset. 

That is perhaps the greatest reason to celebrate Thanksgiving Day, because everyone needs hope. 

We remember I Corinthians 13 because it is "the love chapter" of the New Testament but along with love are listed faith and hope. 

That is the connection between hope and thanksgiving. When we realize how much we have, we gain hope that tomorrow's cares will be met as well. 

"In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union," Lincoln wrote in his proclamation. 

Our nation in 2015 is also divided. Not a division of state boundaries but a division of philosophy and opinion. Guns may not have been drawn yet but crime is abundant as straight people oppose gays, as blacks oppose whites as the poor mistrust the rich and the rich fail to see themselves in that light. 

Today, as much as in 1863, we need Thanksgiving.