Let All Things Now Living A Thanksgiving service with Scripture, song, poetry, and slides

God's Provision Gratitude Thanksgiving Day
By Sharon Bandstra, Alisa Siebenga

Updated March, 2025

We built this Thanksgiving service around the contemporary confession Our World Belongs to God and the poetry of Gerhard Frost. The Thanksgiving tree idea came from Reformed Worship 24, June 1992. We used slides with the first poem, “We Live on Glimpses”—a very effective way of bringing to life the poem and the idea of a bountiful earth. The service was led by Sharon and the praise team, and it did not include a sermon (a first for our congregation).
—Alisa Siebenga

Opening of Worship

Call to Worship

This is a day of thanksgiving. Our God has been very good to us. It is a day for harvest celebration.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it!
“When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you” (Deutoronomy 8:10).

Welcome

This is a day of thanksgiving, a day we set aside to give thanks, expressing our gratitude for God’s many blessings. As you walked in this morning, many of you were handed colored leaves. These are leaves of thanksgiving. While we go through this service, we will touch on many collective and personal things we have to be thankful for. Near the end of the service, we will ask you to quietly reflect on and choose one thing you are especially thankful for. Please write that item on your leaf. We will collect them and place them on the tree.

But first, let us offer our praise and thanksgiving to God in song, for this is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Gathering Songs

“Our God Is an Awesome God” Maranatha!
“Blessed Be the Name of the Lord” Maranatha! 
“I Will Enter His Gates” Von Brethorst
“As the Deer” Nystrom

Words of Reconciliation

We come to be reconciled to our God. [reading of 1 Peter 3:18–22]

Song of Reconciliation: “Freely, Freely” Maranatha!

Words of Assurance

Thanks be to God! Because we have so freely received, let us now freely give thanks for God’s forgiveness and love in word and song. Please follow along in your bulletin, as the rest of the service will be unannounced.

Give Thanks for the Bountiful Earth

Scripture Reading: Psalm 33:1–11

Confession

In the beginning, God—
Father, Word, and Spirit—
called this world into being 
out of nothing 
and gave it shape and order. 

God formed sky, land, and sea;
stars above, moon and sun,
making a world of color, beauty, and variety—
a fitting home for plants and animals, and us—
a place to work and play,
worship and wonder,
love and laugh.
God rested
and gave us rest.
In the beginning
everything was very good.
—Our World Belongs to God, sections 8–9

Poetry and Slides: “We Live on Glimpses” (see sidebar below)

WE LIVE ON GLIMPSES

We live on glimpses,
fleeting glimpses in the forest;
this is its beauty,
this its charm.

A bit of furry fluff
disappearing behind a log,
the flash of a many-colored wing
telling us that a bird is hiding in the bush.
Wild things always in flight,
leaving us wishing for more,
more time to examine and admire,
more to hold in the hand.

We live on glimpses and wish for time-
exposures;
but perhaps this is best:
to see wild things in the open,
untamed and free,
not caged or constrained, but free to go away.
For beauties are enhanced when they are fleeting;
they leave us hungry still.

We live on glimpses of great truths,
wild truths, like the fact of God’s saving love.
To teach is never to tame or domesticate;
it is to acquaint each other
with truth on the wing,
unpredictable, unmanageable,
truth that seeks and seizes,
and will not be captured or contained.
—Gerhard Frost from Seasons of a Lifetime, © 1989 Augsburg Fortress. Used by permission.

Song of Thanksgiving: “Let All Things Now Living” Davis

Give Thanks for Organized Institutions

Serving the Lord
in whom all things hold together,
we support sound education in our communities,
and we foster schools and teaching
in which God’s truth shines in all learning.
All students,
without regard to abilities, race, or wealth,
bear God's image
and deserve an education
that helps them use their gifts fully.
Thank you, Lord, for learning.

Our work is a calling from God.
We work for more than wages
and manage for more than profit
so that mutual respect
and the just use of goods and skills
may shape the workplace.
While we earn or profit,
we love our neighbors by providing
useful products and services. 
Thank you, Lord, for work.

Rest and leisure are gifts from God
that relax us and set us free
to discover and to explore.
Reminding each other that
our Maker rested and gave us rest,
we seek to rest more trustingly
and to entertain ourselves more simply.
Thank you, Lord, for rest.

We obey God first;
we respect the authorities that rule,
for they are established by God:
we pray for our rulers,
and we work to influence governments—
resisting them only when Christ and conscience demand.
We are thankful for the freedoms
enjoyed by citizens of many lands;
we grieve with those who live under oppression,
and we seek for them the liberty to live without fear.
We call on all governments to do public justice
and to protect the rights and freedoms
of individuals, groups, and institutions
so that each may do their tasks.
Thank you, Lord, for governments.
—from Our World Belongs to God, sections 47–49, 52–53

Song: “Earth and All Stars” (st. 3–6) Brokering

Give Thanks for Human Relationships

Meditation

Notes

God calls us into communion with other people: communion in family, between friends, as colleagues and peers, and as people who humbly serve the same God. Frederick Buechner describes family as a web so delicately woven that it takes almost nothing to set the whole thing shuddering or even to tear it to pieces. Yet the thread it’s woven of is as strong as anything on earth. It is within this human family that we begin to know love, and there is probably no stronger love than that of a parent for a child. Gerhard Frost describes it this way:

[Read “Soggy Cereal and Tepid Tea”; see below]

Relationships occur in many other settings as well, and as fallen people in these relationships, we often distort and hurt those around us. We carry personal burdens behind smiling masks. God asks us in Psalm 68:19 to lay these burdens before him and give thanks. “Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens. Our God is a God who saves; from the Sovereign Lord comes escape from death.” In light of this command, let us remove our masks and ask for forgiveness, let us lay our burdens, our shattered dreams, our private pain at God’s feet and give thanks for relationships that challenge and stretch. Let us praise our God.

The next two songs ask you to lay your burdens down and give praise.

SOGGY CEREAL AND TEPID TEA

When I remember that I am a parent,
and think of God as Father,
I recall a special breakfast
brought to me in bed.

We awoke early
to the sound of hurrying feet.
We wondered what they were up to,
our four- and eight-year-olds;
but soon it came—
breakfast in bed.

It was an elaborate menu:
chilled burnt toast, with peanut butter;
eggs, fried, and chilled, too;
soggy cereal,
(the milk had been added too soon)
and tepid tea!
A horrendous mix.

When they stepped out for a moment
to get something they’d forgotten (heaven forbid!)
My wife whispered,
“You’re going to have to eat this, I can’t!”
And I did.

I didn’t eat as a gourmet,
for it wasn’t gourmet cooking;
I didn’t even eat as a hungry man
for I wasn’t hungry.

I ate it as a father
because it was made for me;
I was expected to;
they had faith in me.
And I ate because it was served on eager feet
and with starry eyes.

I think of my poor service to God
as teacher, parent,
interpreter of the Good News.
I know that my offerings are soggy,
tepid, and unfit,
but my Father receives them
and even blesses them—
not because I am good
but because he is!
—Gerhard Frost from Bless My Growing, © 1974 Augsburg Fortress. Used by permission.

Songs

“If You But Trust in God to Guide You” Neumark
“For the Beauty of the Earth” Monk

Give Thanks for God's Redeeming Work in Jesus Christ and God's Sustaining Hand

Scripture Reading: 2 Timothy 3:14–17

Reading

God gives this world
many ways to know him.
The creation shows his power and majesty.
He speaks through prophets, poets, and apostles,
and, most eloquently, through the Son.
The Spirit, active from the beginning,
moved human beings to write the Word of God
and opens our hearts to God’s voice.

The Bible is the Word of God,
the record and tool of his redeeming work.
It is the Word of truth,
breath of God,
fully reliable in leading us
to know God
and to walk with Jesus Christ
in new life.

Illumined and equipped by the Spirit,
disciples of Jesus hear and do the Word,
witnessing to the good news:
Our world belongs to God and he loves it deeply.
—Our World Belongs to God, sections 31–33

Doxology (see below)

DOXOLOGY

Thank you, God Almighty,
for the glory,
the love-filled emptiness
at the beginning;
for the ordered fullness,
the warming pulse-beat
and the budding brainpower
in the continuing.

Thank you for the once-for-all
conception, birth and life,
the death and resurrection,
the victorious ascension
and reigning presence of the Son.

And thank you for the witness
of the Spirit in our hearts
when we cry: “Abba—Daddy—Father!”
—Gerhard Frost from Seasons of a Lifetime, © 1989 Augsburg Fortress. Used by permission.

Songs

“Blessed Be the Lord God Almighty” Fitts
“We Praise You, O God” Cory

Offering: The Tree of Thanksgiving

It is our prayer that the words spoken and the songs sung have reminded you of God’s many blessings. Please spend a few minutes reflecting and writing down your items of thanksgiving on your leaves. When you are finished, please pass them toward the aisle. Members of the congregation will collect them and tape them to our tree. Then our offerings of money will be received.

Songs

[First two are sung by soloists, congregation joins in for the next two songs.]

“Seek Ye First” Lafferty
“All Heaven Declares” Richards

“We Bow Down” Paris
“I Will Call upon the Lord” O'Shields

Prayer of Thanksgiving

Parting Blessing

Parting Songs

“Praise and Thanksgiving” Post, Thomas
“Hosanna!” Kamp