A Legal Commentary and Prayer for Thanksgiving

I was thinking about Thanksgiving celebrated as a national holiday this month. A form of thanksgiving is celebrated in many countries; but ours, celebrated on that last Thursday of November has special meaning. From the English had come days of fasting and days of thanksgiving. It is claimed that the Spanish explorers of the mid 1500’s had expressed thanksgiving in the new world. President George Washington first asked the public to set aside 26 November 1789 as a day of thanksgiving but it was not a holiday. Successive American Presidents continued to have days of Thanksgiving. It was Abraham Lincoln that set Thanksgiving as a national holiday, the fourth Thursday in November. President Franklin Roosevelt briefly changed the holiday to third Thursday in November but Congress changed it back to the fourth Thursday.

It has unfortunately become more of a secular day to “pig out” with family and watch several special football matchups than to reflect on the spiritual thanksgiving to God for His blessings and Providential care when our world has been full of sickness, evil, war and death.

The American legal system, though not perfect because innocent people have been incarcerated or maybe put to death or the guilty may have gone free or a victim has not been made whole because they could not hire adequate legal counsel when opposing wealthy people or mighty corporations, is still one of the fairest legal systems by design. It is formed in principle by Judeo-Christian law and meant to follow what the Framers of the Constitution had in mind for this great experiment in the formation of our Republic.

It is with that in mind may I offer a Thanksgiving prayer for the legal basis of our nation.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your bountiful blessings upon this nation. For your firm hand upon us as we have endured a pandemic, not experienced by many generations and that has taken the lives of so many. It has resulted in other health and economic issues that have taken a toll on many, many more that have thus far survived. We pray God for our leaders, whether we like or agree with them to seek Your wisdom in their decisions. We thank you God for the basis of law that you gave to Moses through the Ten Commandments and the wisdom of Moses’, father-in-law, Jethro who told Moses to divide out among qualified men, those who would help judge the issues between Your people. We thank you God, for the Judges that You raised up to lead Your people, before the people of Israel deciding that they wanted to be like the world, petitioned You for a king. We thank you God for people that desired to brave the travel and harsh elements to come to a New World often with families in tow, to seek individual and religious freedoms. We thank you God, for Godly men that stood to declare independence recognizing that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable rights. Furthermore, that among many tyrannical “injuries and usurpations” committed by the King of Great Britain to include “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. And he has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries”. Now for over two centuries You have protected us through numerous wars and hardships. Father you have fortunately not left us even when our highest Court decided it was legal to kill the unborn. Oh, Father how many of us weep over the deaths of the millions of the unborn that have suffered because of that. We pray God, that the Courts will one day be convicted of the proper interpretation of the Constitution, that the killing of the unborn is not a Constitutional right and is a misinterpreted right associated with privacy. We ask Lord, that You will guide this nation and return it to a nation that seeks not the ways of the world but of you.

We pray these things in your name, Amen.

As always if you do not have an attorney, ask a trusted friend or family member or contact the Alabama State Bar, Lawyer Referral service.

This article is informative only and not meant to be all inclusive. Additionally this article does not serve as legal advice to the reader and does not constitute an attorney- client relationship. The reader should seek counsel from their attorney should any questions exist.

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