Let Thanksgiving Season Your Conversations
Growing up, Thanksgiving and Christmas were my two favorite holidays. I wasn’t a deeply spiritual sort of kid, though. Thanksgiving and Christmas meant waking up to an array of aromas. I can still smell the creole-injected turkey, deep-fried to develop a crispy outer layer of skin that contrasted the soft, juicy interior. Mom’s buttery broccoli casserole was the perfect companion to her stellar corn pudding, dressing balls, and mac and cheese. By the end of the day, we would feast on a dozen or so sides in addition to my dad’s outstanding turkey.
In my family, seasoning is not an optional aspect of our cooking. We don’t just throw on a dash or two of salt and pepper. We want you to taste the food and the special seasoning we carefully chose for it. In fact, the right seasoning can bring out the flavors in the highest quality cuts of steak or make the blandest turkey burger rich with flavor. The right seasoning blend can make some basic stir fry vegetables taste either Mediterranean or Asian depending on how you use them.
So it is with our words. Isn’t it amazing that two people can enter the same conversation and bring very different perspectives? The cynic brings constant negativity while the conspiracy theorist sheds doubt on everything. The critic can easily spot flaws while the gossip is always finding ways to bring up the sins and business of others. Yet, we also see the encourager who can make a five-year-old feel like Da Vinci for drawing a stick figure or the uplifter who reminds us of the promises of God in the worst situations without any sense of false positivity or pretense about our actual struggles.
As Christians, we are called to “let [our] speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that [we] may know how [we] ought to answer each person” (Col. 4:6). This is a call to speak with wisdom and intentionality, and one way to spice up our conversations with everyone—including non-Christians—is to season our speech with thanksgiving.
Why Thanksgiving?
Christians should be the most thankful people in the universe. We are God’s friends, and he cares for us. We are children of God walking every moment with the Spirit of God who cries from within us, “Abba, Father.” We are new creatures no longer enslaved to sin, and we have been born again to a living hope that we will one day see God face to face because we are purchased by the blood of Christ. Is this reason enough to be thankful?
We are part of the visible body of Christ on a local and global scale. This means we have friends who sharpen us as iron sharpens iron. Each week we gather corporately to celebrate the glory and grace of God in our lives as we set our eyes on him together. Throughout the week we have opportunities to love and serve one another in endless ways as we walk together on this pilgrimage called life. Those are reasons to be thankful.
We have access to every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, and though some of us may lack physical wants and scarcely have our tangible needs met, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places has been lavished upon us. We have a God who gives generously and without reproach. There’s nothing for our eternal good that God, through Christ, isn't willing to give us.
We of all people should be thankful.
Thanksgiving Is the Fruit of Watchful Prayer
Lest I speak naively, though we should be thankful, we often struggle with gratitude and contentment. Too often, thanksgiving gets choked out by the firm grasp of our cares and anxieties. Just as we cry out, “Thank you, Lord, for saving our souls,” we step in a puddle of water in front of the fridge and realize the freezer has stopped working. We thank God for our children one minute and the next minute we’re breaking up a toddler fight and can’t help being annoyed that they can’t get along for even one minute while we pray. As we praise God for giving us a job in the midst of an economic crisis and pandemic, we feel the weight of inflation increasingly dwindling bank accounts.
“Watchfulness in prayer reminds us to keep our eyes on a swivel, looking not only for opportunities to pray but also to be thankful.”
In the throes of everyday life, we need Paul’s reminder to continue steadfastly in prayer, “being watchful in it with thanksgiving” (Col. 4:2). Continual prayer reminds us not to compartmentalize our faith to daily quiet times. Steadfastness in prayer reminds us to keep praying with persistence, even when the answers don’t seem to come and our hearts don’t seem to change. Watchfulness in prayer reminds us to keep our eyes on a swivel, looking not only for opportunities to pray but also to be thankful. Together, this continual, steadfast, watchful prayer can turn us into walking gratitude journals, ready to burst forth with thanksgiving at any moment.
This sort of prayer life requires both diligence and much practice, but as we pray daily, we should challenge ourselves to incorporate more thanksgiving and praise into our conversations with the Lord. Practically, this may mean frontloading our prayers with thanksgiving. If you are in the habit of only praying petitions and supplications, consider using the ACTS prayer method which brings in thanksgiving before our lists of supplications. It also helps to pray through some of the psalms of adoration or thanksgiving so we can learn the vocabulary of thankfulness in the context of prayer.
Opportunities Abound for Thanksgiving
I recently attended a dinner in celebration of a couple who has given generously to a local endowment. The room lit up as we saw how much money this family gave to support local students and other organizations in the past decade. Various speakers stood up to show thankfulness for this family’s past generosity. Rather than drone on and on about the hot political topics of the day, we were able to stop and spend time thanking a special family. What if we viewed every conversation as an opportunity to put God’s goodness on display through our thanksgiving?
This doesn’t mean that we need to be weird and sidestep real conversation. But as we encounter political jargon, we can be thankful that God has given us the government for our good. When we are met with the tragic, depressing news of the day, we can express thankfulness that one day Christ will return and there will be no more suffering. As we are tempted to complain about economic issues and frustrations, we can express thankfulness for God’s provision in our lives. The opportunities are endless.
“When we are met with the tragic, depressing news of the day, we can express thankfulness that one day Christ will return and there will be no more suffering. ”
A life of thanksgiving is available to every one of us. In our consumeristic culture, it will take radical heart change and refocusing our attention, but God is able to do so above and beyond all that we can think or ask. But we must ask. We must pray that we could see all of the good God is doing in and among us. We can learn to season our speech with the salt of thanksgiving as we point our Christian and non-Christian neighbors to the providence and goodness of our generous God. Let us pray to this end. Oh Lord, open our eyes that we may see!
Chrys Jones (@chrys_jones) is a husband and father of four. He is a pastoral resident at Grace Church in Danville, Kentucky, and he writes regularly at dwellwithchrist.com. Chrys is also a Christian Hip-Hop artist and producer for Christcentric.