This new country was started with refugees daring to get in those little ships and set sail to a whole new world. As early as 1584 a group of English immigrants landed Roanoke Island. The settlement became known as the Lost Colony for obvious reasons, but Virginia Dare became the first “anchor baby” American.
The first Americans…aka the Native Americans…had lax immigration laws and were a bit perturbed about the idea that their land had not only been “discovered” by the paleface, but was shortly occupied by a group known as the colonist…aka pilgrims…aka the founding mothers and their husbands…as if native mothers and fathers did not count because they had been here for generations.
Thanksgiving usually calls us to look back in time to remember the coming of the founding folks, portrayed in that poetic moment in grammar schools around the country when they broke bread together. In a few years they’d be breaking promises and breaking hearts as the white immigrants started grabbing hunks of what they thought was their God-given land and running those first Americans down a trail of tears and further into whatever wastelands could be created for them.
Over the years since then, wave upon wave of immigrants – including our own forebears – have come here expecting some land of their own. From England and Germany…Israel and Ireland…Poland and Paraguay…from Africa and Australia…from Mexico and Peru… We came from all over and somehow room was always found for another mouth to feed…a family to live…a house to be built. We were the folk of many faiths worshipping a variety of gods and thanking those very gods for a country like this one that gave us the freedom to worship as we will. What an inheritance to treasure…our God-given heirloom spinning in space.
In the final analysis, the Psalmist just might have a point…”the earth is the Lord’s.” We are merely inheritors from previous generations and have the responsibility of leaving the place in good shape for the generations yet to come. It’s a kind of progressive thing…a movable feast almost. And the dinner guests are simply poor wayfaring strangers…traveling not only through this world but sojourners on the spaceship Earth.
Whether we are dirt poor or filthy rich, our lives themselves are simply gifts, part of the inheritance. We need to understand the global picture, but we need to act locally and responsibly and respectfully and lovingly…taking care of all our neighbors…be they foe or friend because they are also inheritors of this time and space. We must turn away from the greed to grab all we can that guides so much of our national and individual lives in order to share the inheritance: God’s earth with all God’s children.