Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name.

ONE FALL to help our family focus on all that we were grateful for, we made a thankfulness chain out of paper leading up to Thanksgiving. For each day during November, we would take a strip of paper, write something we were thankful for on it, and then add it to our paper chain. The only rule was that you could not list the same thing twice. At first it was hard to think of new things, but once we started looking each day for something we were thankful for, it became easier to notice.

We started to notice things like the clean water that poured so effortlessly from our faucets, the heat coming out of our vents, and the food in our fridge. We found ourselves thankful for a call from a grandparent or a message from a friend. As we read through the paper-chain list of things we were grateful for on Thanksgiving morning, we noticed how many times a day we could be thankful. And we realized they were all blessings that are easy to overlook when you’re not paying attention. Looking for things to be thankful for each day started a habit that continued long after Thanksgiving came and went.

Being thankful is a skill that we can develop when we choose to focus on what we are grateful for each day. Even in a hard season, there are things I can thank God for—even if it’s just his love and mercy toward me. We are to praise God in all things. This doesn’t mean we have to be grateful for difficult circumstances or that we should deny a challenging season we are in. But it does mean we can find something to praise, something to be thankful for, even as we acknowledge our struggles. No matter what is happening, in good times and bad, we can choose to offer up thanksgiving to God.

Lord, give us eyes to see the goodness of you around us, and teach our hearts to be thankful, in good and hard times. Amen.

-Kendra

One Good Step: Each day leading up to Thanksgiving, write down one thing you are thankful for each day.