Finding cause to give thanks, even in troubled times

These are troubled times, at home and abroad.
Americans continue to die on the battlefields of a foreign land. Barely three weeks have passed since an election that saw nearly a year of intense campaigning and hundreds of millions spent on attack advertising. The nation is split along party, ideologic and even religious lines.
Closer to home, recent weeks have brought announcements that plants are closing, shifts are being eliminated and jobs are being lost. Labor unrest adds to the divisions between us.
At times such as these, it is perhaps difficult to concentrate on the meaning of this day, difficult to find things for which to be thankful.
Mindful of that, we turn to an era much more divisive than this one, an era in which tens of thousands of young men died -- not on foreign soil, but on our own.
Lincoln's strength
At the midpoint of this nation's Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln still found the strength and courage and faith to proclaim the nation's thankfulness on Oct. 3, 1863. He wrote, in a style cumbersome and yet eloquent, in prose that no politician could pull off today:
"The year that is drawing toward its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.
"To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. 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. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.
A call for healing
"I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union."
To which we can only add, Amen.