Gratitude
For many of us, Thanksgiving is a day to gather with family, eat delicious food and watch lots of football.
Hopefully, it’s also a day to pause and think about God’s goodness and faithfulness in our lives. How has He blessed your family this year?
The following hands-on ideas will help you and your family focus on gratitude in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving Day:
1. Start a family gratitude journal. Encourage each family member to record one thing each day they’re grateful to God for in their life.
2. Decorate a Thanksgiving tablecloth. Buy a fabric or plastic tablecloth and use it on Thanksgiving Day. Set out fabric markers. Ask family and friends to write or draw something they are thankful for this year. Bring out the tablecloth each year at Thanksgiving time so family members can keep adding to it.
3. Make a Thanksgiving chain:
“You know those paper chains kids make by looping construction paper strips around each other to form links? Give each of your Thanksgiving guests several strips and a marker. Ask them to write something they’re thankful for on each strip.
“Later, have your kids make a chain from the strips. Hang it up in your house as your very first Christmas decoration of the year. That way all those things you’re thankful for won’t be forgotten – at least for a month or so. You could choose to make the strips from red and green paper or blue and white paper to make the resulting chain more Christmas oriented. You could also add some glitter to the strips.”
4. Read the story of the 10 lepers in Luke 17:11-19. Ask your children how they would have reacted if Jesus had healed them.
5. Pray at meal time and thank God for His provisions. Ask a different family member to pray each meal so everyone feels comfortable praying aloud.
6. Try this meaningful hands-on activity with your kids: Thanks and Giving Trees. The mommy blogger who created it explains the best way to use it:
“I print off two bare trees for each child. Every evening starting November 1, we put one leaf on each tree. On one leaf, we write something we are grateful for and stick it on the Thanks Tree. On another leaf, we write something we have done to serve or give to others and place it on our Giving Tree. Serving can be as simple as smiling at someone, singing a song to a crying baby, sharing a toy or writing a letter to Grandma.”
7. Memorize a Bible verse about thankfulness. Try Psalm 105:1, Psalm 107:1, 1 Thessalonians 5:18, Colossians 2:6-7 or James 1:17.
A Thanksgiving psalm:
1 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.
2 Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before Him with joyful songs.
3 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.
4 Enter His gates with thanksgiving
and His courts with praise;
give thanks to Him and praise His name.
5 For the LORD is good and His love endures forever;
His faithfulness continues through all generations. (Psalm 100)
Have a Happy Thanksgiving with your family!
taken from the AWANA website
Comments(0) Login to Post Comments