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Tomorrow many of us will celebrate the traditional Thanksgiving holiday. For my family, we are going to a restaurant. We’ll leisurely eat and enjoy time together without all the prep, clean up and leftovers that may or may not be used. Some of the benefits to this decision is that we are supporting someone’s employment and saving us money. By the time I purchase all the traditional groceries to make a spread – I would spend more. I am thankful for all those benefits!

As I have pondered Thanksgiving, my mind has traveled to forms of “Thank you”. Many people use the words, “Thank you” but do they really have meaning? Are they just empty words or some mundane automatic acknowledgement? If they have no real meaning than how can we truly be thankful -during Thanksgiving or any other day? How can we be a Christ Follower and not have true thankfulness?

The Word tells us in Psalm 100, “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever, his faithfulness continues through generations.”

As a Christ follower, we are entering a time of year that we have opportunities through our true “thankfulness”: to express godliness, his love and compassion to others. People are looking for good every day and hoping to find it, but especially in seasons of celebration. Our Psalm tells us, the Lord is good, his love is forever, and he is faithful!

Knowing that God is all those things should give us what we need to be truly thankful. It should not only inspire our thankfulness but teach us how to be thankful. After all, “Be imitators of God. Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us.” (Ephesians 5:1-2)

This week let us challenge ourselves to go deeper with God. To walk in love and give ourselves to our family, friends, and connections. For example: the cashiers, the delivery people, the postal workers, people at gas stations, recycle stations, road workers, restaurants, co-workers, church people and everyone you meet. Let us be mindful that our thankfulness can be used to help people find what they are looking for – the Good. They are looking for God! May we be thankful enough to point them in the right direction!

Yvette Perrin can be reached at theword2yvette@gmail.com.