the desolate wilderness and the fair land

"The Desolate Wilderness" and "The Fair Land" have appeared annually on the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page since 1961. I love Thanksgiving and it is a deep joy to again meet with these articles as well as the great country they represent. How interesting that they were penned by a man named Vermont Connecticut Royster, whose family tradition was to use the names of states for its children. Now there's a pen that can write.

Those of us Americans who have lived in foreign lands know just how special our country is. We do indeed have great cause for thanksgiving at the bounty our Heavenly Father has bestowed upon us.

Read these two articles together with your families, reflect, and give thanks. America is unique and it is incumbent on us to preserve it, defend it, and bequeath it to our posterity.

Just yesterday I came across an old truism that seems especially appropriate for Thanksgiving Day: "Today is not a problem to be solved but a blessing to be enjoyed."

Happy Thanksgiving.

returning from exile

Sam Francis, "The Overyellow"

fifth Sunday in Lent
Psalm 126

Ecstatic joy: "When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy." Imagine what it must have been like for the Jews to have inhabited a beautiful country, to be exiled, but then after 70 years, to return. Subsequently this joy waned: "Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev." The hope of the Psalmist is that if a reversal of fortune happened once, it could happen again: "Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy."

As an American, I can't help but think about my own country in this context. We had the joy of being a people who could start anew. Yet now, 230 years later, despite profound blessings from God, we seem fractured within, and despised without. Oh that our country would find its way back into God's favor, so that as a nation, we could laugh again.

I don't know the fate of my country. I'll do my best to point the direction to joy from a patriotic standpoint. Yet for the true people of God, reversal of fortune is inevitable, because it has already occurred at the cross. We are not yet in paradise, but we are already home in the kingdom of our Heavenly Father. May the souls of God's people sing for joy today.