Keeping Thanks in Thanksgiving – Telling Others Thank You

 

God deserves all our praise and thanksgiving, but He also wants us to have a grateful spirit toward others. God says in Matthew 25:40 that when we do something for others, it is like doing it for Him.  So lets use this Thanksgiving season to not only deliberately express thanks to God, but also to show gratefulness to those He has placed in our lives.

Everyone needs to feel appreciated. Tell others how thankful you are for them, what they do, their attitude, their smile, their words, etc.

Make thank you notes for people in your life that you don’t normally think of thanking, such as the mailman, doctor, teacher, grandparent, the men who pick up the trash, your waiter, the paint mixer at Lowe’s, the UPS delivery man, your children, your spouse.

Be specific and creative.  Lead the whole family to participate in making cards or expressing thanks in some way.

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it, is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”- William Arthur Ward.

 

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Keeping Thanks in Thanksgiving – Write down your blessings!

About the 1st of November, I always put a large piece of paper on the refrigerator with the words, “Thank you God for” at the top.  Family members are encouraged to regularly write down something they are thankful for.  This has been a tradition for many years in our home. We enjoy writing our own and reading what the rest of the family has written.

This year since we are all separated, we set up a Thanksgiving GroupMe account  for group messages just for our family.  If you are separated from your family, you might consider the same thing. We love reading what our children are thankful for and seeing them interact with each other on this account.

It is encouraging to see a lot of giving of thanks on Facebook this year.  Writing down your blessings can really change your outlook.   As the old hymn by Johnson Oatman says, “Count your many blessings; name them one by one; and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”

 

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