Let's Be Thankful

As Americans many of us have grown up knowing about and experiencing Thanksgiving. Many of us gather together with our families, and we eat and eat until we couldn’t possibly take another bite. Once we have completed our eating rituals, we might fall asleep from all the turkey or we might find the energy to watch the football game. Eventually the family members leave and a couple of weeks later you finally run out of Thanksgiving leftovers, and Thanksgiving passes into distant memory as we begin to prepare for Christmas. The thing that we too often forget is that Thanksgiving was specfically set aside as a day to give thanks.


A few years ago, my family started a new tradition. We had always done the family thing and the food thing, but we had never done this before. We never stopped to give thanks. Now wait a minute! I’m not saying that we were complete heathens and didn’t stop to pray! What I am saying is that now we gather before the meal and we stand in a BIG family circle, we hold hands, we go around the circle, and each of us says at least one specific thing we are thankful for this year. The first time we did it I honestly thought it was a little corny. Now I love it. It’s the one time a year when I know I will hear my family speak from the heart and we all turn back and give thanks to God no matter where life has taken us.

Make time to stop and give thanks this year. You never know what God might do!