Happy Thanksgiving!

November 22

It is difficult to celebrate Thanksgiving on this day, for November 22, 1963 is the day America lost her innocence. On this day, forty-nine years ago, John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, purportedly by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, who fired the fatal shots from the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas.

Almost fifty years after the assassination of the young, handsome, vibrant president, much controversy swirls around the event. Conspiracy theories abound these many years later. One other thing that has not abated through the decades is the stunned disbelief of the citizens who lived through that horrible day. No matter one’s politics, the murder of JFK is indelibly stamped on their hearts and minds as a day of tragic infamy.

If this could happen to someone who was a member of the upper strata of society, a hero in war, a proud servant of the Constitution, how vulnerable must the ordinary among us be! Indeed, when we contemplate the exacerbated corruption and observe the ever-widening political divide between the factions of our political parties, we wonder if America can stand. What a horrible tragedy like that of November 22, 1963 could not do might be accomplished through the expanding gulf between members of our voting populace.

But when we put down our fear and lift up our faith, allow our spirits to soar, to take flight from the harsh realities of life and allow our hope to be lifted from the anxiety of time into the promises of eternity, we appropriate the promise of Luke 10:19 that says, “You have power…that is greater than the enemy has! Nothing can hurt you!” We know our security does not lie in the greatness of a nation or in the support of its people for a single political agenda. Our security, our hope is where it has ever been—in Jesus—in the One to whom we ever owe our thanks.