For most of our lives, we’ve been aware that the promise of Thanksgiving—warm and loving reunions of family and friends around a common table heaped with abundance—can set us up for disappointments. A pumpkin pie that doesn’t set. A flight cancelled because of weather. A political argument. A hoped-for reconciliation with a loved one that fizzles in silence.

This year, in our first post-vaccination Thanksgiving, our hopes may even be higher as we finally gather in the larger groups we’ve yearned to be in. We’re striving for a “normal” Thanksgiving. 

Yet with our increasingly polarized viewpoints and ways we see the truth, the number of topics to be avoided in conversation have doubled or tripled. After months of social isolation, we are all clumsy and awkward with our social skills.

In these gatherings of people who are so important to us, I feel what we really want is to know that we are loved. We want to know that we belong. And at that table of plenty, we sometimes struggle to let them know they belong to us.

I ask you to put this Thanksgiving into God’s hands. While we celebrate and give thanks for the generous fruits of God’s creation on the table, we should double that celebration and thanksgiving for the presence of God’s love in the room in which we gather. Pray for God’s love to fill us to capacity. Pray that God’s love cannot help but consume us and be manifest in our words and actions.

We are not called to fix the world. The world is in God’s hands. We cannot heal humanity’s brokenness, of which we all equally share.

We can, however, walk with each other. In such a variety of ways, we are indeed called to accompany one another. 

And when we are too tired to walk, we can stop and rest. We can share what we have at a common table. We can give thanks for the food and people—all small miracles—present in that room. Above all, we can celebrate the glorious wonder that we are all equally beloved by God.

The Rev. Deborah K. Hutterer
Bishop
Grand Canyon Synod of the ELCA