There is Thankfulness and There is Thanksgiving
"Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received.
Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is
the following of that impulse."
- Henry Van Dyke
(1852-1933)
American Poet
Around
Thanksgiving time every year you see a lot of "things that we are thankful
for" lists. I do it myself. I love to post or write about the things that
I am grateful to have in my life. Like
most, I am thankful for my family, my work, my church, my friends and my life
in general. I am a very blessed man. Once you stop to think about it, the list can
go on and on. However, just because we
are thankful does not mean that we show thanksgiving. Thankfulness is a feeling, thanksgiving is an
act.
It is build into the human DNA
that when we really are thankful for something, we desire to do some act to
express that feeling. When people are
kind to us we want to send then a thank you card or a gift. When we come into a unexpected blessing, we
want to share it with others to show how grateful we are. Author and businessman, W. Clement Stone
said, "When you are really thankful, what do you do? You share." This course of action is what it really known
as thanksgiving.
On Thanksgiving Day, we desire
to show our thanks to others by getting the family and friends together for a
wonderful meal. This feast is a way to
take action to say we are thankful for our many blessings. However, are we thanking the one who really
deserves our gratitude? I am not
interested on placing a guilt trip on anyone about their time with God. It is however important that we also express
to God the thanks we have for His protection, care and kindness to us.
So how do we thank God? After all, He has everything and our best is
so small compared to His greatness. The
answer is simple, we thank God by showing love and kindness to His
children. You can show me thanks in a
hundred different ways, however, if you really want me to feel great, do
something nice for my children or grand-children. God is the same way. He gets great joy when He sees that we care
for each other and treat each other as He has taught us to.
This Thanksgiving, do something
kind for someone who could never pay you back for the kindness. Invite someone you know who will be along
this holiday over for dinner. Make and
deliver a dinner to a family that may be struggling this Thanksgiving. By showing kindness to other you in turn make
them thankful and they will desire to show their thanksgiving. And the blessing go on and on. What a perfectly wonderful way to celebrate
how good life really is.
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