Thursday, November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is Thanksgiving. It's been a pleasure to share with you a journey of thanksgiving as we learned about God through His names this month. As I count my blessings today, I count the readers of this blog among them. I hope you enjoyed sharing these devotionals with your family, and I hope your Thanksgiving tree is overflowing with leaves of gratitude.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, but so often the meaning of the holiday gets shunted aside in the hurry to get to Christmas. When the pilgrims sat down to count their blessings, they had buried more than half the people who came to Plymouth with them. The remaining pilgrims knew they faced another harsh winter ahead, yet they set aside time to give thanks to God for providing for them.

Make it a point today to count your blessings in an audible fashion. Help your kids understand all that they have to be thankful for. Spend some time looking at your thanksgiving tree. Have your kids count the leaves and talk about how much they have for which to be thankful.

Before you sit down to eat your turkey, have each person say what they are thankful for today. If you want to mix it up a bit, give everyone some play-doh or modeling clay and have them create the things for which they are thankful. Or, pass around a basket filled with slips of paper with topics on them like family, school, work, home, food and have each person mention something for which they are thankful that fits the category. Be creative, have fun and spend some time thanking God for His blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name." Psalm 110:4

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for allowing God to use you so mightily as His instrument of blessing! I am thankful to you for providing these wonderful daily opportunities to study the names of God and purposefully thank God in so many ways! It has been a special blessing to share your words and inspiration with my elementary students and their families - we've all be blessed mightily (and our classroom tree is gorgeous!!!).
    "May the Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace." Numbers 6:24-26

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  2. Thanks so much, Jennifer. I'm so glad you were able to use it with your class. I had no idea that God would use these devotions to reach an entire classroom of kids.

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