Good evening brethren and Happy Sabbath!  I hope this Sabbath finds you recovering from your Thanksgiving stuffing!  My family and I were very full of both food and thanks on Thursday, grateful to spend the day with one another.

How do I...

If you were to type this phrase into an internet search engine, you might get some strange and varied results.  If you did it on Thursday morning, the auto-fill feature on your computer might have suggested something like 'How do I stuff a turkey' or 'How do I deep fry a turkey' or, if things hadn't gone according to plan, 'How do I put out a grease fire.'  Fortunately, we didn't need to do that last one...

In doing this a couple of times, one phrase that my computer never auto-filled for me was 'How do I...give thanks.'  Now if you type this phrase out yourself, the internet does come up with answers, some of them quite good and thoughtful.

Giving thanks

While that type of internet search can prove useful, I would suspect most of us already have a pretty good idea on how to give thanks.  Certainly words are a good way to start, sometimes accompanied by a gift or an act of service.

Those are great things to do, yet they point to something much larger. Is the giving of thanks something we do, or is a way we think?

Count your blessings!

It's an old adage, but a true one - we should all count our blessings.  The reason we often say or have that saying spoken to us is usually because we're not being thankful for what we have.  If we were to actually take time to do so, we'd see we have no end of things to be grateful for.  Food, shelter, loved ones and most importantly, God's Holy Spirit dwelling in us.

Even though Thanksgiving is over, let's continue to have a mindset that focuses on the giving of thanks.  Words and deed are good, but a yielded heart and mind to God is better.  Let thanksgiving be a way of life for each of us!