Thanksgiving is Our Dialect

We're called to be beings of thanksgiving.
                                                                        ....wow.

Usually statements like that are followed by us all going around in a circle and listing things we're thankful for.  Any takers? Ok...I'll start....I'm really thankful for colors, good conversations, family, friends, this circle, oh yea...Jesus, a house,  good bread(not the bread you buy thats soft and white and squishy bread).....and...

You get the point.(hopefully you sense my satirical vibe here)
But, while we're talking about bread...

Random tidbit: for all you bread makers out there....tip of the day...don't make your water too warm when you add it to the yeast.  If it's in the high 70s range...then your bread rises slower and the flavors have a longer time to absorb.

Ok...back to forced thankful circles that usually only happen in youth group around Thanksgiving time...to be quite honest, I hate these circles.  It feels forced, awkward, and half the time the things we're saying we're so thankful for are the "correct" answers...OR worse yet are said in a voice that  leaves me quite unconvinced that we're even interested in the thing we're so grateful for...

So those things I listed...they are GREAT things that we truly should be thankful for...but what does it look like to speak a dialect of thanksgiving?

I was reading in Ephesians(it always gets to me).  I like to read it in the message version in the mornings...perhaps that isn't a valid version to some, but to me...it wakes me up like a cool splash of water to my face.  It hits me with the reality of this life we've been awakened to.

Chapters 4 and 5 are peppered with talk of speaking and how we should talk and embrace one another with that talk.

   "Though some tongues just love the taste of gossip, Christians have better uses for language than that.  Don't talk dirty or silly.  That kind of talk doesn't fit our style.  Thanksgiving is our dialect."  Eph. 5:4

The beauty...is that this kind of talk and careful use of our words with one another can only flow from a heart already brimming with extravagant love...which we can only get from God...God pretty much owns extravagant love.  Out of the overflow of the heart...the mouth speaks, right?

So...what if....we talked to each other (and about each other) ONLY from a spirit of thanksgiving?  What if...when Amelia(fake name) does something that hurts me...I go to her and talk to her about it from a spirit of thankfulness that she even exists?  I know...this is crazy right?

I never thought about it like this until just this morning.  But...it seems to me...that if we dare to embrace one another with extravagant love(not skinny love like Bon Iver's song...) knowing that we have enough to go around and a spirit of thanksgiving....things would change.  More importantly, we would change.  We wouldn't have different churches at war with one another in their hearts and gossiping about only the negative things...instead we would have a group of people bonded to one another because we see the value in one another and we're thankful for their existence.

Words can kill a person faster than anything else it seems.  They can destroy children's dreams and make them feel worthless...they can destroy another's excitement so easily....Use your words in a way that brings life and love to someone today.  Think about the way you feel inside when someone genuinely values you with their words and looks you in the eye  when you're talking versus when you present something close to your heart and they barely give you the time of day and throw some careless words at you...you don't feel  appreciated because you're not being appreciated in that moment...they're not speaking from a place of thankfulness for you...for your presence...for what you value.

So without further ado....what do you think...did I fall and hit my head too hard when I stumbled out of bed this morning...or can we "Say only what helps, each word a gift." Eph. 4:29 ?