Thanksgiving is America’s oldest tradition. It began as an observance of daily provision and annual blessings — the early settlers and Natives celebrated hard-work and by today’s standards - simple values.
While today Thanksgiving revolves less around harvest, hard work, or daily need, it still provides a time to reflect on the most basic necessities of life which we so easily take for granted. Thanksgiving should be a powerful celebration of our most important and durable needs: home, permanence, loving and supportive family, community, warmth, and food.
May we be grateful this holiday season for strong families and not just for our own. We must celebrate a nation where we can make the conscious decisions necessary to raise our children, while building our families as God intended.
The family is the most basic building block of any thriving and successful society. It is the institution of family that God established for the sake of human flourishing; therefore, its health is important for both Christian and American life.
Within a family, children first grapple with vital moral and spiritual realities. In families, children learn life’s most important lessons, including love, nurture, dignity, purpose and calling. And it's our families who teach us how to be active and vibrant members of the broader community, teaching us how to work hard, how to make mistakes without quitting, how to lead with integrity, and most vitally how to reconcile with one another.
Strong and confident families build a bold, vibrant, and successful future.
An integral part of gratitude is recognizing that we also must cherish, protect, and steward the gift of family. Our families are given to us by God among the most fundamental and vital of gifts, so in turn we must show our gratitude by caring for not only our biological families, but other families as well.
And this starts with our churches. Are there orphan care ministries or support groups for adoptive parents or parents thinking about adopting? Are there ministries of support for families at risk of separation? Perhaps there is a new family that just moved into the community that needs to be welcomed and cared for by the church? We welcome a new neighbor to the community by bringing them a meal and showing true gospel hospitality through our churches.
If family is the building block of any healthy community that must be displayed by our churches who show the world the true value of family through the family of God.
The family is also the institution that was ordained to protect and defend the most vulnerable - children. Children find their most basic needs met within a family; biological or adoptive. This is why strong pro-family, pro-child policies are so vital to any strong and burgeoning nation.
When policy decisions are made without considering the detrimental impacts on children, we destroy the lives and futures of our children in favor of present wants and desires. We must shape politics and policies to positively impact children, especially those who are the most vulnerable and dependent upon protection.
These pro-family, pro-child politics and policies take the form of legislative and community support for vulnerable mothers, children in foster care, and adoptive families. We must stand for legislation which protects the traditional family structure, while conserving the rights and religious freedoms of those who build such families. And we must provide for the basic needs of those women, children, and families in need who find themselves within our sphere of influence.
Conservative policies are dependent upon personal action taken by our families, churches, and communities by showering our abundant blessing of family, security, and provision upon those who are in the greatest need. These responsibilities are a natural responsibility because of the abundance of blessings we enjoy and celebrate.
This year, consider ways to extend the bounty from your tables to meet the needs of the children and families in the closest proximity. Pray for these children. Host vulnerable women in your home. Vote and advocate with the interests of vulnerable children in mind. Consider opening your home to foster care or adoption.
Family is the abiding heart of Thanksgiving. Protect and extend its blessings wherever possible. Our future depends upon it.
Herbie Newell is the President and Executive Director of Lifeline Children’s Services, the largest Evangelical Christian adoption agency in America, host of The Defender Podcast and author of “Image Bearers: Shifting from Pro-birth to Pro-Life.”