Topic: Thanksgiving Series — Key Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 5:18
There’s a single preposition that gets dropped constantly in how this verse is quoted around Thanksgiving, and I think the dropped word changes the meaning almost entirely.
“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” — 1 Thessalonians 5:18
In. Not for.
Paul doesn’t instruct believers to give thanks for every circumstance — to treat the diagnosis, the betrayal, the loss, the financial collapse as things to be specifically grateful for, as though the hard thing itself deserves thanks. He instructs something more honest and, I think, more survivable: give thanks in the middle of whatever circumstance you’re in, without the circumstance itself needing to be the object of your gratitude.
This distinction matters enormously heading into a holiday that often pressures people toward exactly the version Paul didn’t write. Thanksgiving tables are full of invitations to list what we’re grateful for, and there’s an unspoken expectation that the list should somehow account for or spiritually reframe the hard year, not just coexist alongside it. Be thankful for the job loss because it taught you something. Be thankful for the diagnosis because it brought your family closer. Find the lesson in the loss and present it as gratitude.
I don’t think that’s what Paul is asking for, and I don’t think it’s a healthy expectation. Some circumstances don’t have a redemptive lesson attached to them that’s appropriate to voice out loud at a dinner table, and forcing one, prematurely, often does more harm than honesty would. “Give thanks for all circumstances” asks people to find something good in the bad thing itself. “Give thanks in all circumstances” asks something different — maintain a posture of gratitude toward God and toward what remains true and good, even while the hard circumstance is still fully present and still fully hard.
I’ve sat with a lot of people around this specific holiday who feel a kind of low-grade dishonesty creeping in as they prepare to gather with family. They know they’re expected to share something they’re thankful for, and they know the honest answer — this has been one of the hardest years of my life — doesn’t fit the format. So they manufacture a version of gratitude that skips past what’s actually true, present a tidy answer, and go home feeling more alone than they did before the gathering, because nothing real got said.
I think there’s a healthier way to hold this verse at a Thanksgiving table. You can say the hard thing plainly — this has been a genuinely difficult year, this loss or this diagnosis or this struggle has not resolved — and still mean it when you say you’re grateful, because the gratitude isn’t required to be about the hard thing. It can be about something else entirely, held in the same breath as an honest acknowledgment of what’s actually been difficult. Both can be said at the same table, in the same conversation, without either canceling out the other.
This is part of what I think soul care tries to offer that a lot of surface-level holiday messaging doesn’t: permission to be specific and honest about what a year actually contained, rather than editing it down into a version that fits neatly into a single grateful sentence. Naming the hard thing out loud isn’t the opposite of gratitude. It’s often what makes the gratitude that follows actually believable, both to the person saying it and to the people listening.
I think about the seasons in my own life and ministry where gratitude and genuine difficulty existed side by side, and how much more sustainable that felt than the performed version I sometimes tried to offer instead — the version where I pretended the hard year had already resolved itself into a tidy lesson, because that’s what seemed expected at the table.
If you’re heading into Thanksgiving carrying something genuinely hard this year, I don’t think you need to find the silver lining in it before you’re allowed to sit at the table honestly. You’re not required to be thankful for the hard thing. You’re invited to be thankful in the middle of it — which includes naming it plainly, without requiring it to mean something redemptive yet, and still meaning the gratitude you offer alongside it.
That’s a much more honest, and I think much more biblical, way to hold this verse than the version so often printed on napkins and place cards this time of year.
If this resonates with where you are today, BRKN Soul Care is here. Book a free Introductory Conversation at brknsoulcare.org and take the first step. You don’t have to carry this alone.