11/27/2025
Thanksgetting or Thanksgiving?
A Devotional from Chaplain Shelby
Here we are once again, preparing to pause and spend a day with family and friends, looking back over the happenings of this year. If your family is like mine, sometime during the meal we ask each person to share what they are thankful for. Almost without exception it becomes a list of things we received or experienced. I’m thankful for getting good grades, getting a new car, getting a raise, getting into a new relationship, getting a new job, and on it goes. Sometimes it seems Thanksgiving becomes Thanksgetting.
I rarely hear thanks for giving. Thanks for the opportunity to give food to someone who is hungry. Thanks for the opportunity to give my time to sit with a neighbor who is grieving. Thanks for the chance to share my home with a person who has no place to go. Thanks for giving me a need that helped me understand what it is like to be on the receiving end of charity. Thanks for allowing me to give out of my need and not only out of my surplus.
We are all thankful for the smooth times, the good times, the situations we feel we can control. We are thankful when we can come alongside a family who is struggling financially or spiritually. We give from our resources or spend time praying with them in their need. But are we thankful when the need is ours? When we are the ones walking through the hard times? Do we give thanks for both the need and the giver?
Looking back, I have learned more about what matters most from the times when I struggled. I have learned more about the grace of God from my failures. I have learned more about humility when I had nothing to offer. I have learned more about love when I experienced the sting of hatred.
This time of year brings many chances to live out our thanksgiving. Thanks to God for giving me that difficult relative who arrives each year with their toxic thoughts, reminding me to think before I speak and to choose kindness even in negativity. Thanks for the friend or family member who wears their feelings on their sleeve and seems ready to take offense rather than give the benefit of the doubt. That situation pushes me to pray for them and for my own attitude. Thank you for the family member who always wants to talk about politics and whose views are very different from mine. That dialogue reminds me to seek first to understand and then to be understood. My responsibility is not to change them but to represent Jesus so well that they want to know Him more.
This season, as the opportunities arise, I challenge you to celebrate both Thanksgiving and Thanksgetting.
Ephesians 1:15–17
For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.
Ephesians 5:15, 20
So look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
