Here's A Thanksgiving Hooke
There are no Thanksgiving traditions about fourteen year old John Hooke. No songs, no poems, no pilgrim lore. Yet of all the long forgotten stories from the original 102 people aboard the Mayflower in 1620, maybe this is one we ought to remember.
When John Hooke's father died, his mother signed an apprenticeship agreement with a tailor, a man named Isaac Allerton. This arrangement meant John was under the tutelage of Mr. Allerton, a master who would show him a trade, provide food and clothing, and teach him about religion and faith.
The faith and religion lessons turned out to be the most difficult. Allerton and his family were among those on the two month trip across the Atlantic on the Mayflower, a voyage the passengers clearly understood as a pilgrimage for a more perfect faith and the freedom to live it.
John Hooke lived long enough to die that first brutal winter in Plymouth. He was one of many who suffered. Three days before land was sighted another young boy had died. Isaac Allerton's wife, Mary, gave birth to a stillborn son. Another woman gave birth just after landfall, naming the child Peregrine, meaning "one who journeys to foreign lands."
Abraham Lincoln wrote in his proclamation of Thanksgiving as a National Holiday in 1863, "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown."
How right Mr. Lincoln was, and is. Accustomed to the blessings of this world, it's easy to lose a spirit of thankfulness and lose touch with the spirit of Thanksgiving.
His gift is that he reminds me of how rich I am.
When I was John Hooke's age, I was singing, "Over the river and through the woods..." On my fourteenth Thanksgiving Day I was eating extra pie, waiting for the Dallas Cowboys, warming by the fire, or jumping in a pile of leaves. That's just what a kid does the fourth Thursday in November. Here's the "Thanksgiving Hooke," the peace we enjoy as kids, innocently growing up in a land of freedom, largely unfamiliar with pilgrim sufferings, those who died and those who lived.
We give thanks this week. The sacrifice of so many. The bounty of Heaven. The love of family. The blessings of a gracious God.
And the gift of Pilgrims and an apprentice boy. Though we know of no significant contribution John Hooke made to the Mayflower mission he has made a great offering to our point of view. While he did not sign the Mayflower Compact, and he likely had no choice but to board that boat, John Hooke provides an ocean of perspective.
His brief life calls us to search our hearts for a heaping measure of sacrifice and an extra helping of thankfulness.
Here's one more Thanksgiving Hooke: The Biblical word most like the old English concept of apprentice is "disciple." Will we attach ourselves to a master teacher, learn his ways, go where He goes, suffer for His Name, journey with Him to another land in faith?
Will we be pilgrims? Will we be apprentices of Jesus? Maybe it's enough today to ask, "Will we be thankful?"
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