November 27, 2025, by Pastor Ben Bohart, Resurrection Lutheran Church

For many years, celebrating Thanksgiving meant traveling back to Fairbanks to see my family. My wife, Rhonda, and my mom would get up early to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade while they baked pies and made other dishes. My brother and I would build a fire in his homemade plywood smoker and get the turkey going before light (which isn’t exactly early in late November in Fairbanks). There is an archery-only moose hunt in the Fairbanks management area, Nov 21-28, which almost always covers Thanksgiving Day, so at first light, he and I would be out the door with our bows looking for a moose. We have never been successful. The moose have always avoided us. But each year we would go looking for them on principle. Thanksgiving dinner would usually be a late lunch around 2:00 p.m. Then we might take the kids sledding or skiing. We would typically gather in the evening with friends to consume pies and possibly a little more turkey.

Now that our kids are older and our responsibilities in Seward have grown, it is no longer practical to make the drive to Fairbanks in late November. We have begun setting new traditions here, which include joining a local family for dinner who have kids the same age as ours. My brother plans to come visit this year, too. Instead of chasing moose, we might go looking for a few late-season ducks (again, it is about the principle, not the probability of success).

However, turkey, mashed potatoes, or pumpkin pie wasn’t what the Puritans had in mind when they started observing Thanksgiving. Nor were they thinking of family time, nor having each person gathered at the table answer the generic question “What are you thankful for this year?” before diving into their gluttonous dishes of choice.

One tradition my father always insisted upon was reading Deuteronomy chapter 8 before we ate dinner. As the years went by and more people were at the table who were less tolerant of scripture and the Christian faith, he began to pare the reading down to verses 7-10, but my recollection was reading the whole chapter, because it makes much better sense of the holiday.

The early Puritans saw themselves much like the Israelites entering the Promised Land in Deuteronomy. Moses is addressing the children of Israel just before they cross the Jordan. He recounts how God had delivered them from a land of slavery in Egypt. He provided manna for them, and kept their clothes from wearing out the forty years in the desert, and He was now giving them a “good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs… a land of wheat and barley… a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing… And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land he has given you.” Moses goes on to say, “Take care lest you forget the LORD your God… when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them… and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…. Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth….”

While the Puritans were not slaves in England per se, they clearly understood moving to the “New World” as a spiritual pilgrimage, where they would be free to worship and serve the LORD their God. The first settlers initiated Thanksgiving at the first fall harvest to memorialize God’s faithfulness/providence and to pass down to their children the value of obedient gratitude to God. They feared that generations to come might forget the many ways God had provided for them. That they might come to believe “My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth,” and so I am entitled to do whatever I want with it.

How many evils have risen out of the mistaken notion that all my success is simply the fruit of my hard work? I owe no gratitude to anyone or anything. The Apostle Paul in the first chapter of his letter to the Romans argues that this refusal to recognize God’s providence or give thanks is the root cause of all the evils in the world. I don’t think he is wrong.

I haven’t insisted on keeping my dad’s tradition of reading Deuteronomy chapter 8 each Thanksgiving to my family, and it might be difficult to institute that tradition now at someone else’s table here in Seward. But the older I get, the more meaningful that passage is to me on Thanksgiving Day.

The Pastor’s Corner is a monthly article written by religious leaders from Seward.

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