There is a very real need for us to have gratitude in our lives. Being grateful is more than a “warm and fuzzy feeling good” thing. Gratitude is best expressed in action. This action can express itself in giving thanks and spreading joy, in sacrificing our wants in order to help others and by acknowledging that without God we cannot live a life of purpose.

It’s important to create a gratitude list and not just when the Thanksgiving holiday comes around. If you can start writing a list of all the things you are grateful for you will soon discover that no matter what problems and challenges you are currently facing there is always something you can be grateful for. Another day of life. A design for living taught to us through the Gospel way of Life. Jesus Christ is both divine and human, so that means we have a God that understands us completely. What a miracle that God chooses to so completely identify with us that He became one of us and lived not for vain glory, but for bringing all us wandering sheep back to Him to we can have a real relationship and ultimately help spread that good news to others.

Nothing can separate us from this if we will only choose to accept God’s invitation. Not disease, addiction, financial struggle, war, poverty, unjust rulers or any problem you can think of. The other thing to remember this Thanksgiving, especially if you are preparing the meal and doing all the busy work for visitors, family and friends is to not miss what’s most important - God in our midst. Jesus essentially communicated this to us in Luke 10:38-42 when he told Martha not to get so worried and upset. Sure, preparations and work are necessary for the big meal. And hopefully you have others chipping in with a helping hand. But make time to enjoy the time together at your Thanksgiving meal and to truly count your blessings.

A study just released reports that children raised in some eastern European orphanages that didn’t get proper nurturing, such as a lack of physical and emotional contact, suffer from long-lasting deficit in two hormones involved in forming social bonds.

As reported at medpagetoday.com, “the deficits in oxytocin and arginine vasopressin persisted even after the children were removed from the orphanages and placed with loving and stable families in Wisconsin, Dr. Pollack and colleagues reported in the Nov. 21 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

This tells us that caring and loving attention is important – something we should know anyhow. Hug your kids today.

The Living the Solution site continues to get many prayer requests. People pray about all kinds of things. We are encouraged to pray always and I believe strongly that it doesn’t change God’s attitude towards us. It changes our attitude towards God, and ultimately towards others.

This prayer request came in recently and I want to share it with you as an example of a fine prayer request. “Hi, we are having our Thanksgiving banquet for the homeless this week and we really need your prayers that the workers would be strengthened and that the homeless would be saved and deeply loved.” The reason this is a such a good prayer is because it is about helping others and asking that those involved – both the helpers and those benefiting from the help – are strengthened and loved.

Do you wonder why we give thanks to God? Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrated this year in the United States on November 24. I read an interesting piece about why we should give thanks to God on Thanksgiving based on a study of Psalm 100. Max Frazier, Jr. gives us many reasons from this psalm, including that God is good, everlasting, and merciful. God made us and saved us. You can read the piece here. We also have spotlighted some Thanksgiving resources from Gospelcom.net ministries – go here.