THE MORNING EDITION By Mike Huckabee

Good morning! Here are some stories from me that I think you will want to read. Topics include:

• Happy Thanksgiving
• A Time To Be Thankful 
• Prayer Tree
• And Much More

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.

Proverbs 16:9 NKJV

Today's Bible verse was recommended by Wende P.

If you have a Bible verse you want to see in our newsletter, please email [email protected]. 

THE LATEST NEWS

1.  HAPPY THANKSGIVING:

Happy Thanksgiving, America! This is a uniquely American holiday that dates back to the earliest American settlements. It was first declared by President George Washington in 1789, "as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God." It was set on the last Thursday in November by Abraham Lincoln.

I hope you’re enjoying this Thanksgiving as best you can. Thanks to inflation (and not the Macy's parade balloon kind), it’s the most expensive Thanksgiving dinner on record. And you might be eating strawberry jam instead of cranberry jelly because of the supply chain crisis. But we still have much to be thankful for, like our God-given right to ignore Dr. Fauci and spend this Thanksgiving with our families – if you want to. At least that’s an improvement over last year, when we could afford turkey but had no one to share it with, so we were eating turkey sandwiches and turkey hash until Valentine’s Day. Last year was also when we learned that the COVID-19 virus was a registered Democrat, so it would spread at traditional family Thanksgiving dinners, but not at BLM protests, Obama’s birthday bashes or fancy French dinners for liberal politicians.

Lately, Thanksgiving has been under assault on numerous fronts. As if high prices and shortages weren’t hitting us hard enough, we were also being told to cancel Thanksgiving due to the coronavirus, or getting lectured by wokescolds that the Pilgrims were genocidal racists (these tunnel-visioned nags make me very thankful for the “Off” button on my TV remote.)

But all these things are, in the long view of history, passing annoyances. The greatest danger to Thanksgiving is the government’s constant push to take away our rights, especially our First Amendment rights to assemble, speak freely and express our religious faith. Our Pilgrim ancestors came to America seeking those very freedoms, and they were willing to risk everything to attain them. So this is actually a great time to reflect on those days and take inspiration from them that things really can get better, if we all get together and do something about it.

This is also the time to reflect on the deeper meaning of Thanksgiving. It’s not just about turkey and stuffing, football on TV and early Christmas shopping. It even means more than a big family get-together, although that’s a very important part of it that we’re especially grateful for this year.

Thanksgiving is about giving thanks to God for our blessings, many of which we only enjoy because we are fortunate enough to be Americans, and we inherited rights and liberties that were revolutionary in the early days of this nation. Many of them had their genesis in the arrival of the Pilgrims.

Four-centuries-and-one-year ago, the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. They had set out on a dangerous journey across the ocean in the small ship, the Mayflower, to a hostile wilderness where survival was far from certain. Indeed, half the settlers died during that first harsh winter. But they were willing to risk their lives for the right to be free to worship God in their own way, without the government telling them what they were and weren’t allowed to say, do or believe (is this starting to sound surprisingly relevant to today?)

Last year, I linked to an excellent op-ed by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, and it’s worth reading every year as a Thanksgiving tradition:

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/thanksgiving-pilgrims-tom-cotton

Sen. Cotton talks about not just the history and importance of the Pilgrims’ arrival and the first Thanksgiving, but another, even more important legacy they bequeathed to us. It was the way they organized their settlement, codified in the Mayflower Compact, the first example of the principle of “government by the consent of the governed.” Its ideas would still reverberate more than a century-and-a-half later when it became a huge influence on the writing of the US Constitution (although today’s leaders definitely need a sharp reminder that they are in power only thanks to the “consent of the governed.”)

Sen. Cotton writes, “In this covenant, the ship’s passengers agreed to form a ‘civil body politic’ of ‘just and equal laws’ based on the consent of the governed and dedicated to the ‘Glory of God’ and the ‘general good of the colony.’ Immediately after signing the compact, the signatories conducted a democratic election to choose their first governor.”

As he notes, it’s no wonder John Adams called the Pilgrims’ arrival “the birth-day of your nation.” These are the principles America was founded upon, and they arrived 401 years ago, in 1620. America was not founded upon slavery, which supposedly arrived in 1619 (even though some Native American tribes had long practiced forms of it), and which Christian abolitionists, Republicans and many of the Founders strongly opposed and we fought a bloody Civil War to end.

To counter the left’s assault on America and its history, The Federalist launched “The 1620 Project.” At this link is an excerpt from that specifically about the Pilgrims’ and the Puritans’ experiences and what they contributed that helped make America such an exceptional nation and a “shining city on the hill.” It’s another piece that should become a Thanksgiving tradition.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/25/how-the-pilgrims-planted-the-seeds-for-americas-constitutional-rights-and-liberties/

This year, while we’re thanking God for all our blessings, let’s ignore the America-hating historical revisionists and give even bigger thanks than usual for the brave men and women who risked far more than the wrath of Twitter trolls to come to the New World, seeking religious freedom. Let’s also give thanks for the blessings of liberty and self-government that they secured for themselves and their posterity (that’s us.) Let’s honor their legacy by making sure that we protect and defend those rights and liberties for all so that we can hand them down intact to future generations.

And let us also ensure that our schools teach that history so that future generations won't be hoodwinked into hating their own nation and giving away their birth rights for a mess of pottage (no, that's not a Thanksgiving dinner side dish.)

2.   A TIME TO BE THANKFUL FOR FRIENDS AND FAMILY: 

Thanksgiving is not only a time when we give thanks for our many blessings as Americans, it’s also a time when we normally gather together as families and get reacquainted with relatives we don’t see any other time of year. I hope that this year, you'll once again be able to welcome your older relatives to your home and table, and not see them only via Zoom.

Every Thanksgiving, I find myself thinking back on beloved family members who are no longer with us. There’s one who meant so much to me that sharing my memories of him has become sort of a holiday tradition here. So I hope you’ll indulge me as I again share the story of a very special relative from my childhood. I usually saw him only once a year, but he taught me a lesson that helped make me what I am today and for which I still give thanks.

When I was a boy in Hope, Arkansas, one thing about the holidays I most looked forward to was the annual visit from my Uncle Garvin. Garvin Elder was my mother’s half-brother from her dad’s first marriage, and so much older than her, he was like a grandpa to my sister and me. He was an accountant and a lifelong bachelor from Houston, and he cut quite an impressive figure whenever he arrived by bus in Hope.

He owned stocks (I could hardly imagine such a thing!) and carried a real leather suitcase with travel tags, not like the cardboard suitcase we owned but never used. And he wore a suit, tie and starched white shirt -- every day! In our town, if you saw a man in a suit, it could mean only one of two things: either it was Sunday, or he was going to or coming from a funeral.

Over the holidays, while my parents were at work, Uncle Garvin was the only adult in the house. So when he wasn’t taking his daily unbreakable appointment with the “Perry Mason” rerun, I would constantly pester him to play checkers with me. Now you must understand, this was in the days before self-esteem classes and helicopter parents. Uncle Garvin didn’t realize how impolite, damaging, even psychologically traumatic and triggering it was to beat the daylights out of a sensitive young boy at checkers. No, he played to win. And he relished beating me…which he did, over and over and over.

Of course, I hated losing to him. But that just made me want to challenge him again. Over time, I gradually got better until I actually beat him occasionally.

Looking back now, I realize what a huge favor Uncle Garvin did for me by developing my competitive spirit. These days, we’ve built a society of hand-wringers so afraid of hurting a child’s self-esteem that everyone gets a trophy just for showing up, no matter how poorly they perform. We’ve taken away their incentive to work hard and get better.

This is the same mindset that’s given us incompetent CEOs who crash companies, then run to the government for a bailout because they’re “too big to fail.” And idiots in government who bail them out with money they confiscate from hardworking taxpayers, because it’s “not fair” that some succeed when others don’t. And who also think that "fairness" means taking money away from people who earn it and giving it to people who don't work but do vote.

Call me crazy, but I believe there’s something to be said for competition and for rewarding hard work, talent and intelligence. And there’s a lot to be said for the lessons learned and the character built through trying your best, failing and trying again.

So every Thanksgiving, when I’m giving thanks to God for my countless blessings, I include a little prayer of thanks for my Uncle Garvin…and for all those long-ago checker games that were so painful to lose at the time.

And of course, I’m thankful for all the folks who help me create my newsletters and website and my show on TBN, and all of you who read and watch. I hope to be giving thanks for that for many Thanksgivings to come!

3. THE ATLANTIC LAUNCHES WAR ON THANKSGIVING:

This article was originally written on November 25, 2020.

The Atlantic magazine, last seen trying to convince us that President Trump called our World War I heroes “suckers and losers” based on anonymous sources, is now trying to convince us to cancel Thanksgiving. They must think that we’re suckers because the writer gives away his real motivations by describing Thanksgiving dismissively as “a nebulous day of atoning for the sins of colonialism by eating food and saying thank you.”

He tosses us a turkey bone by writing, “Next year will be an opportunity to be thankful for the elements of the holiday that we tend to take for granted. It will be like a Super Thanksgiving.” But then he gives away his and the Atlantic’s real feelings about cherished American traditions and we suckers and losers who revere them: “Or maybe this new way of doing it will work so well, you’ll never want to go back.”

Right, we’ll love being separated from our loved ones by fear and paranoia on one of our most important holidays that we’ll want to continue eating frozen turkey dinners alone while watching MSNBC on every Thanksgiving from now on, as I assume the staff at the Atlantic will.

Lisa Carr at the Victory Girls blog has more on the Atlantic article and the general war on Thanksgiving here:

Personally, I doubt that the Atlantic’s stance on canceling Thanksgiving will carry much weight, since every thinking person I know long ago canceled their subscriptions to the Atlantic.

4. I JUST WANTED TO SAY:

Thank you for reading today's newsletter. 

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

This feature returns with images of America's cities, landscapes and people.

HYMNAL: COME, YE THANKFUL PEOPLE, COME

Listen: https://youtu.be/QWiEMJPxoZ8

1 Come, ye thankful people, come,

raise the song of harvest home;

all is safely gathered in,

ere the winter storms begin.

God our Maker doth provide

for our wants to be supplied;

come to God's own temple, come,

raise the song of harvest home.

2 All the world is God's own field,

fruit as praise to God we yield;

wheat and tares together sown

are to joy or sorrow grown;

first the blade and then the ear,

then the full corn shall appear;

Lord of harvest, grant that we

wholesome grain and pure may be.

3 For the Lord our God shall come,

and shall take the harvest home;

from the field shall in that day

all offenses purge away,

giving angels charge at last

in the fire the tares to cast;

but the fruitful ears to store

in the garner evermore.

4 Even so, Lord, quickly come,

bring thy final harvest home;

gather thou thy people in,

free from sorrow, free from sin,

there, forever purified,

in thy presence to abide;

come, with all thine angels, come,

raise the glorious harvest home.

Author: Henry Alford

If you have a favorite hymn you want to see in our newsletter, please email [email protected].

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Our hope is that our newsletter readers will consider these prayer requests each day.

HEALTH AND HEALING

"Pray for my mother…90 years old…very frail refusing to eat and drink . She has dementia and her health is failing. Pray for our family too. Thank you."

"Earl has Alzheimer's...that dreadful disease. Pray that research will quickly come up with prevention and cures."

"Friends who are in questionable and bad health."

"My husband, who has undiagnosed symptoms on the left side of his head. He has had multiple tests run and nothing showing up in the test. Please also pray for me. I worry all the time. I want to be freed from it."

"Jackie Lord Kirkpatrick is a foreign missionary in Macedonia and is undergoing treatment for cancer back in her hometown of Baton Rouge, LA."

"Please pray for my family that we might all be reconciled and be loving and forgiving of one another."

"Please pray for a co-worker, Mark, who has Covid. He has been hospitalized for 2 weeks and could be put on a ventilator if things don't improve."

"Pray for all the suffering from Covid and the flu, and most of all pray for our country!"

"I pray daily for cancer patients, I myself are a 3 time survivor of this horrible disease. Please join me in praying for everyone burdened with this disease!"

"I am in the hospital where is they say Covid but I don’t believe it is. Levels low have a need for them to come up so that I can go home to really find out what’s going on. My name is Ramona Holcombe and I have been with Huckabee since day 1."

"Prayers for those in the WORLDWIDE church who belong to Christ Jesus. There are thousands facing persecution daily because they love the Lord! We in the western world continue to be protected from that level of suffering. Pray for those suffering for their Faith. And forgive us Lord for being so self-absorbed."

"My granddaughter who has lupus. She is 26 and is going through dialysis three times a week for kidney failure. Her dad my son, recently passed away from cancer. Please pray for her salvation also. Her brother needs salvation also. Thank you and God Bless."

IN MEMORIAM

"For Baby Stillman and family, please Lord send strength for recovery from an unthinkable situation. In His Name we give thanks."

"For my Father, Dennis, who unexpectedly passed away and for my Mother, Barbara, who was diagnosed with Alzheimers."

"In memoriam for my sweetheart Allen, lost to horrible cancer one year ago. I love and miss you every day!"

"My son Steve passed away May 17th 2021 from cancer. I know he is with the Lord and not suffering but he was my only child. I am having a hard time and will never get over it. God Bless you."