First Thanksgiving - Prayer Not Food

What image comes to mind when you think of the first Thanksgiving? A turkey cooked over an open fire, or in a wood burning stove? People gathered around a table eating more food than they need? Those are common images that gave inspiration to our American holiday.

I was reading some material on sermomillustrations.com recently and welcomed my own sense of history being corrected. Taken from Today in the Word, July 1990, p. 22, here is the record of a first official time of thanksgiving. Subsequently, I saw this story elsewhere.

"The first American Thanksgiving didn't occur in 1621 when a group of Pilgrims shared a feast with a group of friendly Indians. The first recorded thanksgiving took place in Virginia more than 11 years earlier, and it wasn't a feast. The winter of 1610 at Jamestown had reduced a group of 409 settlers to 60. The survivors prayed for help, without knowing when or how it might come. When help arrived, in the form of a ship filled with food and supplies from England, a prayer meeting was held to give thanks to God."

That was the first Thanksgiving.