Give Thanks
November 21, 2011
I have much to be thankful for! Although the stores are full with Christmas decor, music, and holiday shoppers, let’s not miss the meaning of Thanksgiving. This week, focus your family on being thankful. Consider gathering your family together for these following activities.
- Help your family memorize Psalm 95:2: “Let us enter His presence with Thanksgiving.”
- Let your kids create individual place cards for each person that says: “Thank You, God, for _______”
- Cover your table with white paper and let your kids color all over it with pictures of the first Thanksgiving or pictures of why they are thankful.
- Create a family Thanksgiving wreath. Trace the hands of each family member, cut it out, and write why you are thankful. Glue the handprints together; string a ribbon through the top to hang.
- Invite elderly or widowed neighbors as your honored guests.
- Choose a charitable organization to donate money, food, or clothes.
- Deliver a meal to a family in need.
- Deliver a pie or a plate of cookies to neighbors with Psalm 95:2 written on it.
- Volunteer at a soup kitchen.
- Send a care package to a soldier.
- Visit hospital patients or nursing home patients.
- Rake leaves or shovel snow for a neighbor.
Whatever traditions your family may have this Thanksgiving, consider activities that teach your children thankfulness and that serve others!
Welcome to my site about my life as a writer, editor, speaker, and consultant. I love God and my family, and my goal is to help and encourage others along the journey. 
This is TRULY what it is all about!!! I love doing things as a family to help those in need. I want my daughters to grow up in a home that sees giving as just a way of life. Thank you, God, for opening up opportunities to bless someone else’s life. I pray I don’t miss them! Thanks for this wonderful reminder!
Eleven years ago I hosted my in-laws for Thanksgiving at our house because Chris was on call and couldn’t leave town. This was my first time making a turkey let alone all the stuff that goes along with it. I was pretty frazzled as we sat down at the table and I felt like I had lost the meaning of the day in all my work. After the prayer, we went around the table and said what we were thankful for. The next night when we sat down next for dinner, Bailey said what he was thankful for after the prayer. Since then, it has been our tradition to do this at every meal. Sometimes it’s big things and sometimes it’s little things. We really get a sense of what has happened in everyone’s day this way. That’s how we stop and remember that every day is a good day to thank God for all the things in your life.