Hi there!
Here are a few questions to get the conversation going with your family during your Thanksgiving meal. Relax, this is easy. Read them over before you start, and then when mealtime arrives, you can dive in.
You can either open the meal with these questions, wait for a lull in the conversation, or wait until it’s time for the second helping of dessert. Whatever works for your family and feels right—go for it.
Host, Read Out Loud:
Hi everyone. It’s Thanksgiving Day and before we go on any further everyone high five (or just say thanks) to the host and/or team of people who prepared this meal.
Great. We can feel the love.
All of us made the time to spend today here and share this meal together. So we’re going to take advantage of us sitting around the table and dive into some questions about thankfulness. Because it can be easy to forget why we’re around this table in the first place.
Ready? Let’s go.
(Host you share first, then go around the circle clockwise. Or mix it up. It’s your party.)
- We’ll start easy. Food, football, and the parade on TV—it’s the holy trinity of Thanksgiving. Which is your favorite? Ready, go.
- Now, take a look around the table. If you could only eat one thing, what would it be and why?
- What’s the best thing that’s happened in the past six weeks?
- What are you most thankful for in 2019?
Thanks everyone! Before we go, I’d like to seal this with a prayer.
Prayer options:
Host: Choose the prayer that works for your family. Or, feel free to go off script and pray however you’d like. Just be sure to pray. It’s powerful when a family gathers, shares, and encourages each other.
1 - A simple prayer for any family:
God, thank you for the people around this table, the food we shared, and the stories we told. May we grow together this year, and gather together next year. Seal the memory of this meal and this time in our minds. Keep reminding us of the words we spoke to each other and that we are all loved.
Amen
2 - Scripture to read over your family:
Colossians 3:12-17 (ESV)
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Amen
3 - The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father in heaven, holy be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For yours is the power and the kingdom and the glory, forever.
Amen
