Most people are familiar with the Thanksgiving observance of the Pilgrims in 1621, but a few years later there was another more dramatic observance.  A drought had hit the area.  Six weeks passed with no rain.  Food supplies were low.  An expected supply ship had gone missing for three months.

Colonist Edward Winslow described the Pilgrim’s crops, beginning with the corn:  “Both blade and stalk hanging the head, and changing color in such manner, as we judged it utterly dead. Our beans also ran not up, but stood at a stay, many being parched away, as though they had been scorched before the fire.”

A grimmer assessment can hardly be imagined.  There seems to be only one solution.  The disaster “moved not only every good man privately to enter into examination with his own estate between God and his conscience, and so to humiliation before him,” says Winslow, “but also more solemnly to humble ourselves together before the Lord by fasting and prayer.  To that end a day was appointed by public authority…”

So they prayed, kneeling on the baked ground.  When they commenced that morning, “the heavens were as clear, and the drought as like to continue as it ever was,” says Winslow.  When the Pilgrims arose “some eight or nine hours” later, “The weather was overcast,” Winslow wrote, and “the clouds gathered on all sides.”

The next morning “distilled such soft, sweet, and moderate showers of rain,” states Winslow, “continuing some fourteen days, and mixed with such seasonable weather, as it was hard to say whether our withered corn or drooping affections were most quickened or revived.”

The Pilgrim’s crops, once counted as “utterly dead,” turned green and flourished.  “Good fortune, on the other hand, was a sign of God’s mercy and compassion,” says Travers, “and therefore he should be thanked and praised.”  

“And therefore,” concludes Winslow, “another solemn day was set apart and appointed for that end; wherein we returned glory, honor, and praise, with all thankfulness, to our good God, which dealt so graciously with us.”

From a 2007 editorial by Mark Coomer