When I say the word, “Thanksgiving”, what sort of things come to mind? Do you picture a Norman Rockwell style family dinner with grandma carving a giant turkey? Are you looking forward to curling up in your favorite recliner for a well-deserved nap? Maybe for you, the real celebration starts after inhaling a turkey sandwich and booking it to Target for some Black Friday deals.

Whatever Thanksgiving looks like for you, I think we can agree that the purpose of the celebration often gets drowned out by the commercial ruckus. Thanksgiving has a controversial history, with white Europeans landing on the shores of the United States many years ago. After killing many of the people living on this land, they found themselves facing some harsh winters. A particularly bountiful harvest led them to hold a celebration and thus, the tradition of Thanksgiving was born.

Most Americans today have many things to be thankful for, but do we ever consider them outside the 4^th Thursday of November? We prefer to complain about the things we lack rather than being grateful for the good things that are already present in our lives.

I know that I have countless things in my life for which I constantly fail to be thankful. I have a loving family, supportive friends and the opportunity to study at one of the best universities in the state. I have my health, a place to live, clean food and water. I have had the opportunity to dance, write, run, travel and do many other wonderful things. My list could be much longer, but this is just a glimpse of the amazing blessings that I have in my life.

In my life, I have found that striving to develop a spirit of thanksgiving results in feelings of contentment. When I am content, it helps me to feel at peace. For many, it seems impossible to find peace as we look around this broken world in which we live. By taking a moment to be thankful, we move ourselves and our world just a little bit closer to a place of peace. When we are thankful, we experience the peace of contentment which we can extend to others and the world around us.

What if we viewed Thanksgiving as a point of initiation rather than an isolated event? It is good to be with family and friends on Thanksgiving and to talk about the things for which we are sincerely grateful. Allow those conversations and thoughts to continue into the following days, weeks and months. If we continue to focus on developing a spirit of thanksgiving, I believe we will discover true joy and peace this holiday season.

When we start to think about things in our lives for which we are thankful, do you ever wonder where these good things are coming from? In fact, who are we even thanking when we say we are thankful on Thanksgiving? I believe that God is the giver of every good thing we have in our life. He is pleased to give us these good things and see the ways we are blessed by His provision. We are called to respond to his kindness with expressions of thanksgiving, not only on this holiday, but throughout our lives.

If I were to extend the list of things I am thankful for, I know of one thing that I would certainly include. The thing that I am most thankful for in this life is having a personal relationship with God and his son, Jesus Christ. I am thankful to God for creating me and all of the blessings he has provided in my life. I am thankful to Jesus for willingly paying the penalty for my sins, by dying for a person that had yet to be born. I am thankful for the Holy Spirit, who was sent to earth following the death of Jesus to advocate for me when I interact with God. To say that I am “thankful” for all that God has done in my life is a major understatement. I believe that on earth, we have a partial understanding of what it means to be thankful. I believe that in heaven, where we will experience true peace, we will find true thankfulness there as well.