Thanksgiving Week Post

This week's post is going to be a little different. It's Thanksgiving week, family is in town, I will be busy baking a ham, and watching some college football. With that in mind (plus I'm sure that all of you are equally busy and blessed as well), I wanted to use my one post this week to talk about Thanksgiving.

I used to teach American History in a past life (aka before children) and some of the best Bible lessons can come to us through history. So now I want to share with you a true story from America's past about the Pilgrims and Squanto.

We all know the history of the Pilgrims. They had fled England to settle in North America. It would be their perfect solution. No one owned the land. Practically no one from Europe lived there. They could start over. They could be free. They could worship God the way they felt called to do. But a little over halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, the Mayflower encountered a storm that cracked the main beam. The ship was patched together so they could continue their journey, and they arrived in present day Massachusetts in November 1620. If you know anything about the Northeast, you know that they have brutal winters, and the Pilgrims had landed right at the beginning of winter. They had no time to plant and barely any time to build. That first winter only 47 of them survived until March because of disease. Then came the spring. The people that had lived through that first winter began learning how to survive in this new land.

They were taught by Squanto, a Patuext Indian. And now our story takes a providential turn. Who exactly was this Squanto? It turns out that the Pilgrims had chosen to use his old village for their settlement. Mainly, because there were a lot of buildings still standing, and they needed shelter quickly when they had landed in November. That spring Squanto shows up, and he speaks English! Out of all the locations along the east coast, the Pilgrims settle in the one spot where an English-speaking Native American lives. Squanto had been captured in 1614 and taken to Spain where he was supposed to be sold as a slave. Some friars took him in, and he convinced them to let him try to return to his homeland. He made his way to London where he lived for a few years and finally returned to the Massachusetts area in 1619. When he got home, he discovered that while he was gone his entire tribe had been wiped out by a disease, so he began living with the Wampanoags.

And to reference Casablanca, out of all the Native Americans in the New World who just happens to walk into Plymouth colony, but Squanto the English-speaking Patuext Indian by way of Spain and London. Squanto was the savior of Plymouth colony. He taught the Pilgrims farming and hunting techniques. He helped the colonists develop a good relationship with the Wampanoag people by translating for them. You can easily make the case that without Squanto, the Pilgrims would not have survived.

And so on this Thanksgiving, be thankful for a God who led a ship of Pilgrims to the perfect spot for their survival. He is leading us to our perfect home as well.

Be thankful for a God who provided the Pilgrims with salvation from a most unexpected source. He has provided our salvation from a most unexpected source too.

And, finally, remember to tell Him thank you. Thank you for heaven, thank you for salvation, thank you for blessing us far more than we deserve. Because everyone likes to hear that someone appreciates their love and sacrifice, even God.

Thankful in the treehouse for so many blessings that I can't even count them all,

Chelli