In this season of thanksgiving, many ideas cross our minds that we find ourselves thankful for. We might be thankful for the few days off to spend with family and friends. We might be thankful for a day of food and football. We might be thankful for a day dedicated to the sport of Black Friday shopping.

This may also be a day that we find more difficult than most. Amidst these days of thankfulness and joy for others, we may find ourselves alone. We may find ourselves not living the perfect life that produces a perfect Thanksgiving (or at least one worthy of posting on social media- you know the “real world”). We may find ourselves facing some tough days while everyone around us celebrates the holiday.

This brings me to the thought- “What really is the purpose of Thanksgiving?”  What really should be our focus? Have we taken a holiday focused on being thankful and replaced it with unrealistic expectations, the need to impress or a personal desire to skip it entirely in anticipation Christmas season?

In an attempt to find those things we should truly be thankful for, my middle school Bible class and I completed an activity today about Thanksgiving. While reading several verses on thanksgiving, we came across the word “extol” in Psalm 95:1-2.

“Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.”

Since we have been working a lot recently to increase and improve vocabulary, we stopped and looked for “context clues” to help determine what we thought this word “extol” meant. The kids have gotten pretty good at finding these context clues.  They did not fail me today.

After just a few short moments, this is what they came up with: to praise, to worship, to surround Him. Our compiled definition came to “surround God with praise and worship”

Just for fun insert that definition back into the verse in place of extol.

“Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and surround God with praise and worship.”

Instead of the business of the holiday, maybe our focus should be moved to “surrounding God with our worship and praise.” If this becomes the purpose of our thankfulness, all of the other elements of the holiday will shrink in importance. The distractions will disappear. 

I wanted to share this encouragement with you as you head into the Thanksgiving season. What has overtaken your season of thankfulness? What expectation have you become slave to ? What difficulty reigns over your holiday? Combat them all by purposefully “surrounding God with worship and praise”. Worship is our greatest form of thankfulness.