My Thanksgiving Crush

Thursday, November 24, 2011 Posted by Sara

As a third grade teacher, I can’t help but think about Pilgrims, Squanto, and hand print turkeys this time of year. Confession, in secret, when the class isn’t looking, I drift off thinking of my Mayflower crush, William Bradford. He was Plymouth Plantation’s most notable governor and founder, the man commonly associated with creating Thanksgiving. There’s just something about him.

I have thought about Bradford and the voyagers on the Mayflower this holiday. A little over one hundred men, women, and children huddled on a stinky, creaky boat for three months in search of a new life. I can’t help but think of what was going through their minds. I’m sure they thought they had lost their minds a time or two. I marvel at this question: what possess a little renegade English neighborhood in Amsterdam to pack themselves into a small boat, travel across an ocean for the first time and start a new little town on a large chunk of land they knew little about?

My guess: Hunger. I think Bradford and company were hungry – hungry for freedom and hungry for God. Bradford’s life reminds me that incredible things happen when people get hungry. I doubt Bradford knew what he was heading up when he led the people to Plymouth. He didn’t know his hunger to live for Christ would help birth a nation.

It bids me to wonder then, what is my hunger for Christ capable of?

As we feast this Thanksgiving, let us give thanks for the hungry ones who have gone before, and for the hunger that propels us on.

“It was to the astonishment of many and almost to the wonder of the world, that from so small a beginning such great things should ensue, - as in due time was manifested; and that there should be resting place for so many of the Lord's people here, when so sharp a scourge had come upon their own nation. But it was the Lord's doing, and it ought to be marvellous in our eyes.”

-William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, Puritan father and governor to the Pilgrims

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Matthew 5:6