It is the best time of the year – the seasons of thanks and giving. For me it’s particularly meaningful when I consider how quickly one follows the other and the relationship between the two holidays that mark the end of the year.

If the 4^th of July is Independence Day, Thanksgiving could just as easily be called Dependence Day. It is the time we set aside to formally recognize something we should acknowledge every day with every breath we breath.

All of life and everything in life is a gift.

The essence of life is a chain of love, which binds all things together.  Plants and animals trade atoms and air – oxygen for hydrogen, hydrogen for oxygen – in a mutual exchange of life.  The water that falls on the earth passes through and is collected in the rivers, lakes, and oceans until it rises to fall again. The earth too must give so that it can receive.

I know this better than most.  I often think there would be little left of me if I subtracted the contributions others have made to my life.

Our interdependence is what gives meaning and purpose to our lives.  Much has been said on this subject but no one has said it better than Henry Emerson Fosdick.

“The Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are made of the same water,” Fosdick said. “It flows down clear and cool from the heights of Hermon and the roots of the cedars of Lebanon.  The Sea of Galilee makes beauty of it for the Sea of Galilee has an outlet; it gets to give…but the Dead Sea with the same water makes only horror, for the Dead Sea has no outlet; it must keep its bounty.”

WE ARE WHAT WE BELIEVE 

Sometimes you have to say something:

• I believe that love is stronger than hate.
• I believe faith is stronger than fear.
• I believe hope is stronger than despair.
• I believe in the fundamental goodness of mankind.

Sometimes you have to do something:

• While I cannot do everything, I can do something. I will not let the fact I can’t do everything keep me from doing the something I can.
• I can touch one.  I can teach one.  I can heal one.
• I can speak truth to power.
• I can be an instrument of peace.
• I can be the light in the darkness.

Sometimes you have to believe something:

• I believe mankind is indivisible.
• I believe we get what we give.
• I believe you cannot help another without helping yourself.
• I believe you cannot hurt another without hurting yourself.
• I believe the better angels of our nature always rise.
• I believe it only takes a single ray of light to penetrate the dark.

Kafka said, “The meaning of life is that it has an end.”

The meaning of love is that it does not.

There is a piece in each of us that is God’s piece.  This is the thing we call our “soul.”

Love is the expression of the soul.  The soul expands with every act of love, every kind word, every time we see beyond ourselves and reach out to those in needs.  It contracts every time we see and don’t say, every time we turn our backs and walk away.

“God is no White Knight who charges into the world to pluck us like distressed damsels from the jaws of dragons or disease,” Nancy Mairs said.  “God chooses to become present to and through us.  It is up to us to rescue one another.”

The prayers we send to God for answers come back as questions.  God is in the distance from what is to what ought to be.  It is His voice that tells us right from wrong, offers the judgment that “someone should do something about that,” and prompts our response.  What is disclosed to consciousness is something that is.  What is revealed to the conscience is something that should be.

The call we make to a friend in need, the smile we give a stranger, our every act of kindness are all part of God’s design.  We act for God each time we respond to a need we see or sense.  Every act of love ripples out in an endless cycle of giving and receiving.

This is how the world is changed.  It’s love that acts.

Love sustains all, transcends all, makes all things possible, and all conditions of life tolerable.  Love unites us because love alone connects us by what is deepest in ourselves.  So long as we are loved, we are necessary and immortal.

Edward Everett – not Lincoln – delivered the Gettysburg Address.

Everett was a pastor and a politician who served as a Representative, Senator, Governor, and Secretary of State.  He also served as President of Harvard University.  He was 69 years old and known for his oratory.

It was four and a half months after the Union armies defeated the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg.   Through the summer, General Lee had pushed northward into Pennsylvania. General Mead and the Union Army met him at Gettysburg on the 1^st of July. They fought for three days.

When it was over, the battlefield was strewn with more than 50,000 bodies. To put it in perspective, nearly as many Americans died at Gettysburg in this one battle than in the totality of the ten years we were engaged in the Vietnam War.

Twenty thousand people gathered for the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863.  After a prayer, Everett spoke for two hours, delivering a 13,607–word oration.

Lincoln was invited to be present at the last moment. The words of his invitation were explicit: “It is the desire that, after the Oration, you, as Chief Executive of the nation, formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.”

Lincoln felt no slight and took no offense. He wanted to be there and meant to use this opportunity.  He spoke for two minutes and in those two minutes transformed Gettysburg from a battlefield into a symbol of national purpose, pride, and ideals. It only took him 272 words.

In a letter to Lincoln written the following day, Everett praised the President, saying, “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

“Four score and seven years ago,” Lincoln famously began, “our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

In so doing, Lincoln reiterated the fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence. He followed by proclaiming “a new birth of freedom” that would bring true equality to all of its citizens.  In other words, Lincoln redefined the Civil War as a struggle not just for the Union, but also for the principle of human equality.

A hundred and fifty four years later, we still struggle.  The two great founding principles of our nation – liberty and equality – are said to be in opposition and Lincoln’s challenge remains.  We can’t help wondering how “any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

The best way to navigate these troubled waters is to remember where we began.

In a speech to his fellow Puritan colonists in 1630, John Winthrop set the direction for our nation by defining the vision for the society he hoped to establish in the new world.  “All true Christians are of one body in Christ,” he said; “the ligaments of this body which knit together are love.  All parts of the body being thus united…in a special relation as they partake of each others’ strength and infirmity, joy, and sorrow…If one member suffers, all suffer with it; if one be in honor, all rejoice in it.”

“We must be knit together in this work as one man,” Winthrop warned.  “We must entertain each other in brotherly affection.  We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities…For we must consider that we shall be as a City on a Hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

This is a large part of what makes the United States unique in the history of the world. America is the only nation composed of people drawn from another place.  It is the only nation whose people are not connected by blood, race, culture, or original language.

The differences between us are many, but we are united by the ability to see ourselves in others and the understanding that the most selfish thing we can do is to be selfless.  One cannot succeed without another.  Our true interest is a mutual interest.

Three years after Gettysburg, Senator Charles Sumner, in his eulogy for the slain President, said Lincoln was mistaken that “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” Rather, Sumner remarked, “The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech.”

Sumner was right.  Consider this.

Up to the Civil War “the United States” was invariably a plural noun:  “The United States are a free country.”  After Gettysburg it became singular: “The United States is a free country.”

At Gettysburg, Lincoln transformed the union from a mystical hope to a constitutional reality.  He saw beyond the moment to the spirit of America.

As we are now daily reminded, the battle continues.

Last month, I said, “Heroes will rise.”

Two weeks ago, I said, “We have always been at our best when things are the worst.”

These facts were clearly evident sixteen years ago.

I still remember walking the sacred ground near the World Trade Center in the aftermath of the tragedy there. Many images were burned into my mind but the one that endures is the memory of men and women in uniform – rescue workers and medical technicians – methodically moving through the destruction, sorting through mountains of debris.

It was as if the planes that struck the towers opened a window to our soul. Heroes emerged.

All they did is what they were called to do – and what they were called to do was often nothing more than their jobs. It was the extraordinary ordinariness of their efforts that was most compelling.

They had no grand designs or elaborate plans. The scope of their effort was the length of their arms. Their long-term plan extended no further than the nearest burden. Yet, in the process of simply doing what needed to be done, millions of pounds of concrete, metal, and glass, were moved – one piece at a time.

In the months that followed, seventy percent of all Americans made a contribution to the relief effort – a response unprecedented in world history. More than 60 percent of all Americans made a financial contribution to the relief effort.  Many others volunteered time, gave blood, opened their homes, and contributed household items and supplies.

If we needed further proof of who we are, we got it last week in the response to Hurricane Harvey.  We are already starting to see it again in response to Hurricane Irma.

More than 17,000 people were rescued during Hurricane Harvey in East Texas. Significantly, many of the rescuers were neighbors and volunteers who simply did what needed to be done.  Since then, millions have been raised for the relief effort.

Hurricane Irma left some 6 million people in Florida without power.  We saw the utility trucks coming to help – some from as far away as Indiana and Las Vegas – before the storm had even cleared the state.

It will take years to recover, but we will be there for them.

That’s who we are. That’s what we do.