In many ways, Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday. Highways and airports are clogged with people traveling from near and far to be together for the holiday weekend. While every culture celebrates times of thankfulness, the America Thanksgiving is unique in its connection with our national and cultural history, dating back to the first Thanksgiving in 1621 with the English Pilgrims and Wampanoag Native Americans at Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Thanksgiving is a day filled with nostalgia. And there’s more to the holiday than turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. It’s also more than just recalling the blessings we enjoy. It can be a celebration that is terribly self-focused if not centered on gratitude to God. As we sing each week in the Doxology, “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.” It is consistent with James 1:17 where we read that “every good and perfect gift is from above.” Until 2023, every Presidential Thanksgiving proclamation has acknowledge that we are indebted to God for all the blessings we enjoy. (See especially the first one from George Washington in 1789.)
Thanksgiving is meanlingless apart from a recognition of the one toward whom our thankfulness is directed. Many of the Psalms are expressions of thankfulness toward God, as in Psalm 100 and Psalm 103. Here is a wonderful prayer of Thanksgiving from the marvellous collection of Puritan prayers, “The Valley Of Vision.”
O my God
Thou fairest, greatest, first of all objects,
My heart admires, adores, loves thee,
For my little vessel is as full as it can be,
And I would pour out all that fullness before thee in ceaseless flow.
When I think upon and converse with thee
Ten thousand delightful thoughts spring up,
Ten thousand sources of pleasure are unsealed,
Ten thousand refreshing joys spread over my heart,
Crowding into every moment of happiness.
I bless thee for the soul thou hast created,
For adorning it, sanctifying it,
Though it is fixed in barren soil;
For the body thou hast given me,
For preserving its strength and vigour,
For providing senses to enjoy delights,
For the ease and freedom of my limbs,
For hands, eyes, ears that do thy bidding,
For thy royal bounty providing my daily support,
For a full table and overflowing cup,
For appetite, taste, sweetness,
For social joys of relatives and friends,
For ability to serve others,
For a heart that feels sorrows and necessities,
For a mind to care for my fellow-men,
For opportunities of spreading happiness around,
For loved ones in the joys of heaven,
For my own expectation of seeing thee clearly.
I love thee above the powers of language to express,
For what thou art to thy creatures.
Increase my love, O my God, through time and eternity.
From The Valley Of Vision, © 1975, The Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle, PA Used by permission
Such prayers are helpful for us as illustrations of the kinds of things for which we ought to be grateful on Thanksgiving. Frequently, times of sharing blessings in our churches and in our homes are limited to the obvious ones (all of which should be stirring thankfulness in our hearts), things like family, food, homes, freedoms, health, and the like. But we ought also to include expressions and attitudes of thankfulness to God for spiritual gifts like these which come from His merciful hand and heart. These include hearts that love Him with increasing passion, minds that are hungry for more understanding of His Word, souls that long for the salvation of lost loved ones, opportunities to share the gospel openly, churches that faithfully proclaim the gospel, the assurance we have from His promise to return, and the spread of the gospel to an unbelieving world.
Many of us preserve special memories of Thanksgiving traditions in the churches of our youth. It probably included a service in which people stood to share testimonies of God’s goodness in their lives. Perhaps it involved an early morning pancake breakfast in the church fellowship hall, and then going to volunteer in serving a turkey dinner to guests at the local rescue mission or delivering food baskets to needy families in the church’s neighborhood. And we learned such Thanksgiving hymns as “We Gather Together to Ask the Lord’s Blessing,” “Come, Ye Thankful People Come,” and “Now Thank We All Our God.”
We also sang “Count Your Many Blessings.” It was written by Johnson Oatman, Jr. (1856-1922) and first appeared in an 1897 Methodist songbook, “Songs for Young People.” During his career, he wrote more than 5,000 gospel songs, an average of 200 each years, including “No, Not One.” His texts were devotional expressions of Wesleyan theology. He was born near Medford, New Jersey, the son of a father who was an excellent singer who taught him to love the songs of the church. At the age of nineteen, he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, in which he was first licensed to preach and later ordained. Though he often preached in local congregations, he never served as a pastor of a church. He worked with his father in a mercantile business at Lumberton, NJ, and rose to an executive position in a major life insurance company in Mt. Holly, NJ, where he lived.
On July 21, 1878, Oatman was united in marriage to Miss Wilhelmina Ried, of Lumberton, N.J. Mrs. Oatman was a most devout Christian lady, who walked by her husband’s side and blessed his life until November 20, 1909, when the Lord called her to “Higher Ground.” The Oatmans had three children, a son and two daughters. The eldest daughter, Miriam, was quite talented, and wrote over three hundred hymns herself. She was also a composer of music, having set music to several of her father’s hymns. “How the Fire Fell” is perhaps the most widely known.
Johnson Oatman, Jr., aspired to follow in his father’s footsteps in music, as well as pursuing theological studies for ministry. But though he preached often, he was never called to pastor a church. At the age of thirty-five, he found his calling and never looked back. He realized that while he could not sing like his dad, he could write hymns. Thus began a journey that led him to write hymns, a journey that enabled him to preach the gospel in these songs. Though his favorite hymns were the popular, “No, Not One” and “Higher Ground,” it was “Count Your Blessings” that had a meteoric journey.
The words of this song were put to music by Edwin Othello Excell (1851-1921), born in Uniontown, Stark County, Ohio, the son of a minister in the German Reformed Church. Commonly known as E. O. Excell, he became a prominent American publisher, composer, song leader, and singer for church, Sunday School, and evangelistic meetings for many decades. Excell compiled or contributed to about ninety secular and sacred song books and is estimated to have written, composed, or arranged more than two thousand of the songs he published. The music publishing business he started in 1881, and which eventually bore his name, was the highest volume producer of hymnbooks in America at the time of his death.
Excell was described as “a big, robust six-footer, with a six-caliber voice” and an extraordinary range that enabled him to solo as either baritone or tenor. One publisher who observed him leading songs at a revival later noted that Excell “was a master of mass control; he might easily have become conductor of some mighty chorus.” These talents fostered his early success as a rural singing teacher in Pennsylvania and helped secure a position as church choirmaster for the two years preceding his move to Illinois. Among the work for which he is appreciated today is his arrangement of the tune we use when singing John Newton’s text, “Amazing Grace.”
Excell assisted with the music of Christian Endeavor Sunday School work for at least two years and later served as music editor for correspondence courses established through the Chautauqua Press. He also performed as a vocalist for programs at the Chatauqua Institution in western New York state. Insights gained from these associations were significant in that much of what Excell would later publish targeted Sunday School and youth program musical needs. During the final decade of his life he assisted with the music program of famed British evangelist Gipsy Smith. One account from a London daily newspaper reported that on one occasion when Smith presided over a meeting, he announced a hymn, saying, “Let us sing ‘Count Your Blessings.’ Down in South London, the men sing it, the boys whistle to it, and the women rock their babies to sleep to the tune.”
Everyone is familiar with the opening words of the famous poem from Elizabeth Barret Browning’s “Sonatas from the Portugese” (no. 43), published in 1850, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Generally understood to be a love poem to her husband, Robert Browning, it can take on another character when read as a prayer of a believer, writing of his or her love for the Lord Jesus. That’s something of the idea behind Oatman’s hymn, “Count Your Many Blessings.” May our Thanksgiving praises, and our daily prayers, include lists of all the things we can count of His blessings to us.
In stanza 1, we remember the hardships we face and the discouragements they bring. But rather than focusing on the darkness, we make a conscious decision to “count your many blessings,” to lift our spirits by lifting our eyes to the goodness of the Lord. We so easily forget those blessings, it will often be a real surprise to us when we see again all that the Lord has done.
When upon life’s billows you are tempest toss’d,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.
In stanza 2, we face the heavy burden we carry from all the cares of this life, including the cross of suffering and rejection and failure we’re called to bear. But instead of focusing on those heavy weights that could drag us down, we make a conscious decision to count our blessings, which then enables us to sing as doubts fly away.
Are you ever burden’d with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your many blessings, ev’ry doubt will fly
And you will be singing as the days go by.
In stanza 3, we think about how much material wealth others in this life enjoy and wonder why the Lord has not given such prosperity to us. But then we look instead at the eternal wealth He has promised to us. Truly, we have the best treasure of all, a heavenly reward which money cannot buy, one which Christ has purchased for us.
When you look at others with their lands and gold,
Think that Christ has promised you His wealth untold,
Count your many blessings, money cannot buy
Your reward in heaven, nor your home on high.
In stanza 4, we face the conflict that sin has brought, not only into the world in general, but even more specifically into our own lives, the conflict from damaged relationships as well as the daily war against temptation. Sometimes it can seem so hopeless and press us down in discoursagement. But once again, we find relief by counting the many blessings we have which far outweigh all those struggles, blessings which angels bring to us to give us “help and comfort” all the way to our “journey’s end.”
So amid the conflict, whether great or small,
Do not be discouraged, God is over all;
Count your many blessings, angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.
In the refrain, we repeatedly speak to ourselves, giving this biblical counsel. It’s what the Psalms tell us to do, to “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits” (Psalm 103). Paul did the same thing from his imprisonment in Rome as he wrote to the Philippians that they should “Rejoice always, and again I say, rejoice.” That’s what he and Silas did in the jail at Philippi.
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God has done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your many blessings, see what God has done.
Here is a link to the song with the three most frequently sung of the four stanzas.