In the midst of the War Between the States, Abraham Lincoln offered the following Proclamation for Thanksgiving:

I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.

       And I recommend to them that, while offering up ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

            Lincoln asked for prayers of healing from the consequences of the “national perverseness.” Our nation, however, continues to struggle with perverseness and division. If ever our nation and our nation’s leaders needed our prayers, it is now!

            Psalm 33, attributed to David by the LXX, is a great psalm of praise, perhaps commemorating a great national deliverance from heathen enemies. “Rejoice in the LORD, O ye righteous: for praise is comely for the upright” (1). “For the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in truth. He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the LORD” (5-6). “The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance” (11-12). Pray that our nation will be one whose God is the Lord.