What Are You Thankful For?

My friend, what are you thankful for?

I encourage you to write it down. Make a list. Why not share it with your loved ones whom you are celebrating with today?

Lessons From the First Thanksgiving

When we look back at what we call the first Thanksgiving, the 1621 harvest feast shared by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people, we’re reminded that gratitude is rarely born from comfort. More often, it rises from hardship, loss, and God’s unexpected provision along the way.

1. Gratitude grows in the soil of suffering.

The Pilgrims had endured brutal loss. Nearly half of their community died during the first winter. Yet when harvest came, they chose to give thanks.

Lesson: Gratitude isn’t denial of hardship; it’s the choice to see God’s faithfulness in the midst of it.

2. God often provides through people we didn’t expect.

The Pilgrims would not have survived without the guidance and generosity of the Wampanoag people, especially Squanto, whose unique story placed him in their lives at exactly the right moment.

Lesson: God’s provision is sometimes wrapped in unlikely friendships, unexpected help, and people we may have never imagined would bless us.

3. Peace is possible—even across deep differences.

For a season, two very different cultures broke bread together. Their alliance wasn’t perfect or permanent, but it showed that peace can happen when humility and mutual need meet around a shared table.

Lesson: Gratitude makes room for reconciliation, empathy, and hospitality toward those who don’t look, think, or worship the way we do.

4. Thanksgiving is communal, not solitary.

The inaugural thanksgiving celebration was not a private prayer but a shared feast that was days long, open-hearted, and marked by generosity.

Lesson: True thanksgiving widens the table. Gratitude grows when shared.

5. God is there in every new beginning.

The Pilgrims were strangers surviving difficult times in a strange land, trying to build a life from scratch. Their feast was a declaration not only of survival but of trust in God for the future.

Lesson: Every new season, new job, new chapter, new calling, comes with the same quiet truth: God goes before us.

Be salty, stay lit.

Rainer Bantau —The Devotional Guy™

You can now find my articles in The Christian Grandfather Magazine.

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