Put the THANKS back into Thanksgiving this year!
Sometimes in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, we completely miss Thanksgiving.
Christmas receives so much more attention. And it’s no wonder where the retailers are concerned. Besides selling us food—Thanksgiving isn’t a big money-making holiday. Christmas focuses on what we don’t have (Santa’s lists) and shopping becomes the way we (in America) do Christmas.
Thanksgiving centers on celebrating what we do have therefore it doesn’t demand quite as much money exchanging hands.
Therefore the gods of the American culture;
materialism,
narcissism,
greed and envy...
don’t benefit nearly so much from the celebration of Thanksgiving so they try to get it over with quickly.
Their latest tactic is to swallow up the night in “Black Friday.”
Perhaps our pandemic will somewhat stifle the mad rush to the mall to get your panties from Aerie just past midnight!
Not only does the retail world want you to by-pass Thanksgiving, so does the Enemy.
Satan is opposed to anything that would develop an attitude of gratitude in God’s people.
For when we take time to consider all that the Lord has done for us—we recognize His activity in our lives.
And when we recognize His activity in our lives, we celebrate His power.
When we celebrate God’s power, our faith grows and when our faith grows, we trust Him more.
When we trust Him more, He rewards our faith by demonstrating His glory and when He demonstrates His glory
The earth is filled with the glory of the Lord and people everywhere begin to know Him as He truly is!
Don’t miss Thanksgiving.
If you want to do Thanksgiving right you will have to make an intentional effort to swim against the current of the culture. You will also have to deny your flesh.
The act of Thanks-Living does not come natural.
Here are 5 ways you and your family can participate in genuine Thanks-Living around your dinner table this year:
5 Thanksgiving Prayer Ideas:
5 kernels of corn (candy corn): Give every member of your family/group 5 kernels of candy corn and take turns sharing 5 things you are thankful for—AFTER reading this short excerpt from the pilgrim’s first winter (and we think we’ve got it bad with Covid-19!):
45 of the original 102 colonists died during the first winter. There were 17 fatalities in February alone. Many succumbed to the elements, malnutrition, and diseases such as scurvy.
Frequently two or three died on the same day. Four entire families perished and there was only one family that didn’t lose at least one member.
Of the 18 married women, 13 died. Only three of 13 children perished, probably because mothers were giving their share of food to the children.
Tradition tells us that the pilgrims were given 5 kernels of corn a day during that winter.
Thanksgiving table cover/placemats or table runner: Cover your thanksgiving table with paper and provide sharpies so that family members/friends can write what they are thankful for (younger children can draw pictures. Read Psalm 100.
Read a presidential thanksgiving proclamation. (If you use Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation, put on a top hat and let your most presidential person do the reading.)
Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.
By the President: Abraham Lincoln
Start a family/small group gratitude journal: Purchase a blank journal and invite a scribe to record the things your family/group is thankful for this past year. Put the journal in a safe place, read it each year and add to it.
Make a gratitude pumpkin. Using a sharpie, fill a pumpkin with the various things for which you are thankful. 
ENJOY Thanksgiving and decide to practice Thanks-living every day, not just on the 4th Thursday of November.
