Agape Freedom Community

🙏 AGAPE FREEDOM CHURCH — THANKSGIVING DEVOTIONAL

By: Rev. Jeric Yurkanin

“Gratitude, Truth, and the Story We Inherited”

It’s Thanksgiving —

a time when families across America sit down together, say a prayer, pass the food, laugh, cry, and look back on their year.

We pause.

We breathe.

We acknowledge the blessings we’ve been given.

We humble ourselves because none of us earned the air in our lungs, the sunrise in our window, or the people we love.

We’re only promised this one life.

And because of that, we shouldn’t take a second of it for granted.

Not the good.

Not the hard.

Not the parts we’re still trying to understand.

Our calling — as Jesus-shaped people —

is simple:

Leave this world a little more healed, a little more loved, a little more just than how we found it.

But part of honoring God with our gratitude is also telling the truth.

Even the uncomfortable truth.

Even the parts of the story we didn’t learn in elementary school.

Because thanksgiving without honesty

is just a holiday.

Thanksgiving with truth

is worship.

🌾 Acknowledging the Land and the Pain in the Story

Before there was a “Thanksgiving dinner,”

before Pilgrims, before colonial prayers, before our American traditions…

there were Native peoples — vibrant nations, rich cultures, families, children, stories, languages, prayers, dreams, and homes.

Many of them experienced unimaginable violence, displacement, and death at the hands of European settlers — including Christian Pilgrims who believed God had given them the land, even if it meant taking it from those who already lived there.

This doesn’t mean we must carry shame.

But it does mean we carry responsibility.

Responsibility to remember.

Responsibility to learn truthfully.

Responsibility to live differently.

Jesus said, “The truth will set you free.”

Not the sugar-coated version.

Not the patriotic version.

Not the edited-for-comfort version.

The truth.

Because love can’t heal anything we’re unwilling to name.

🌿 Gratitude That Grows Us

Now we return to Scripture — not as a weapon, not as a shield to hide behind, but as an invitation to become more human, more awake, more loving:

📖 1 Timothy 4:4–5

Everything God created is good.

That includes Native lives, Native cultures, Native nations.

To give thanks means acknowledging the image of God in all people — not just the ones history books chose to highlight.

📖 Psalm 100:4

Enter His gates with thanksgiving.

True thanksgiving looks like justice.

True praise looks like compassion.

True gratitude looks like honoring those whose stories were silenced.

📖 Colossians 2:6–7

Rooted… built up… overflowing with thanksgiving.

Gratitude isn’t shallow.

It’s rooted.

It makes us stronger, gentler, and harder to deceive with political or religious narratives that harm others.

Thanksgiving is not a moment —

it’s a lifestyle of healing, truth, and transformation.

🕊️ The Agape Freedom Calling

So today, as we eat and pray and laugh with our loved ones, let’s also hold this:

We can love America and still tell the truth about how it was built.

We can enjoy Thanksgiving and still honor the people who paid the price for its origin story.

We can be grateful and still be honest — because honesty is love.

And love is always our calling.

This Thanksgiving, may we practice gratitude that grows us, compassion that humbles us, and truth that sets us free.

Because freedom — real freedom

———Part 2————-——-

THE REAL STORY — THE PART THEY NEVER TAUGHT US

We all grew up hearing the same Thanksgiving story:

Pilgrims in shiny black hats.

Native Americans smiling, handing over corn.

Everybody sitting down together for a peaceful dinner like one big happy family.

It’s a beautiful story.

It’s also not remotely true.

And if you love history — the real kind, not the Hallmark version — then you know the truth matters. We can’t grow, heal, or become better humans if we’re still clinging to a children’s coloring-book version of America.

So here’s what actually happened, in a way that’s honest, teachable, and still human.

⸻

BEFORE THE PILGRIMS ARRIVED — A STOLEN ADVANTAGE

By the time the Pilgrims landed in 1620, the Wampanoag people had already survived a brutal plague brought by European fishermen years earlier.

It wiped out up to 90% of their communities.

Imagine losing almost everyone you know — and then watching ships full of strangers walk onto your land acting like it’s empty.

That’s the world the Pilgrims walked into.

They weren’t stepping into a “New World.”

They were stepping into someone else’s home after most of the family had died.

⸻

THE “FIRST THANKSGIVING” — WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED

The Wampanoag helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter.

They taught them:

• how to grow corn

• how to fish

• how to stay alive

Not out of some cute holiday spirit, but because alliances meant survival.

The feast we call “Thanksgiving” wasn’t even a planned unity meal.

Pilgrims were shooting guns celebrating a harvest.

Wampanoag warriors showed up because they thought they were under attack —

then stayed and shared food.

It wasn’t a Hallmark dinner.

It was diplomacy, tension, and survival.

But America later turned it into a happy kindergarten play with paper hats, because the real story was too uncomfortable for textbooks.

AFTER THE MEAL — THE PART THEY NEVER TELL YOU

The years that followed weren’t peaceful.

Once the Pilgrims grew stronger, more colonists arrived.

More land was taken.

More treaties were broken.

More violence erupted.

Finally, in 1675, came King Philip’s War — one of the bloodiest conflicts in American history per capita.

The same “Christian Pilgrim descendants” who praised God for survival soon:

• burned Native villages

• enslaved Native people

• murdered entire communities

• sold survivors to plantations in the Caribbean

This is the part that never made it into our elementary school musicals.

The people who helped the Pilgrims survive were almost wiped out within a generation.

⸻

AND YES — RELIGION WAS A TOOL FOR IT

Pilgrims believed they were “chosen by God” to build a new Christian society on this land.

And when you believe God gave you a land…

you stop asking permission from the people already living on it.

Religion became:

• the justification

• the fuel

• the moral loophole

• the excuse to claim innocence

Just like later in American history, when religion was used to justify:

• slavery

• segregation

• residential schools

• cultural erasure

This isn’t about attacking Christianity — it’s about telling the truth.

The truth sets people free, not fairy tales.

⸻

SO WHAT DO WE DO WITH THIS TODAY?

We don’t have to hate Thanksgiving.

We don’t have to cancel family dinners.

We don’t have to sit in guilt.

But we do have to tell the truth.

Because honoring the truth:

• teaches empathy

• prevents history from repeating

• shows respect for the people who suffered

• raises kids who understand both gratitude and justice

We can still enjoy the day.

But we don’t have to pretend the story was peaceful when it wasn’t.

⸻

A HEALTHY, HONEST WAY TO SEE THANKSGIVING

Here’s the version that actually means something:

Be thankful.

Enjoy your people.

Love your family.

But don’t erase the people who were here first.

Remember the Wampanoag.

Remember the Native and Black Native communities whose land was taken.

Remember the truth that textbooks softened to protect feelings instead of honoring reality.

Real gratitude doesn’t hide history.

It learns from it.