Teach Kids What Matters

Not the Best Kind of Thankful!

Did you ever consider that there could be a good and better kind of thankful? This was a Thanksgiving thought I had not considered. I hadn’t really thought of it much. All my life I was told to be thankful for things, so I was. The Bible says be thankful, so I was. (Let me make it clear that I’ve not been perfectly thankful all the time. I’m sure you could have already guessed that.) So, how could “being thankful” possibly ever be less than best?

This week, I was challenged by this Thanksgiving thought. There is a good and a better kind of “thankful,” and it’s worthy of our attention. Many years in the past, our family has shared around the dinner table at Thanksgiving, each person telling of one thing they’re thankful for. I thought it was great. But looking at it now, I was missing something really important.

What Was Missing?

I was missing the object of our thankfulness. It’s not enough to be thankful for our family if we don’t know WHOM we are thanking. We can be thankful for our food, shelter, family, and friends, and many specific blessings, but if we’re not directing our thanks to somebody or something, it means very little. In fact, if we are thanking the tree for its shade, and no more, it is worship of the creation instead of the Creator. 

A Thanksgiving Thought

So this Thanksgiving, I plan to be mindful of this. I will not be thankful to an unknown source. I won’t be thankful to the creation instead of the Creator. And I won’t be thankful to “nobody.” Because that’s what being thankful without an object is– it is being thankful to nobody.

So my wish for you is a very happy Thanksgiving in which you are thankful to God of the Bible. Join me in being thankful to the God who has created us, redeemed us, provides for us, and loves us from eternity past through eternity future. And this Thanksgiving thought is what I want to teach our kids.  

Would you click below and tell Whom you are thankful to and also for what you are thankful this year? Thanks! It would mean a lot to me and others!