Seven Ways to Invite God to Thanksgiving Dinner

Just like the Pilgrims so long ago, when most people sit down to Thanksgiving dinner they express gratitude for the heaping plate of food before them. Unlike the Pilgrims, however, whose thanks were offered specifically to God in heartfelt prayers, today too many people’s words of gratitude are offered in a cursory manner with no thought of a Higher Power. Before they put that first forkful of turkey into their mouths, they say prayers as a necessary or cursory formality without much thought to a Divine Presence.

Physically Full But Spiritually Empty

It’s easy to find yourself feeling physically full but spiritually empty at the end of the Thanksgiving holiday feast. Much like other holidays, religious or otherwise, you probably forget to invite God to your Thanksgiving table.

In other words, you don’t look at the big picture. You don’t factor in how God might have had a hand in creating the food you are about to eat, in the abundance and prosperity that made it possible to purchase and prepare the feast or in your safe arrival at the Thanksgiving table. Thanksgiving offers a wonderful opportunity to put God into the picture, which transforms the holiday into a spiritual and meaningful one.

Fill Thanksgiving with Meaning and Spirit

With a little thought and planning, you can transform empty Thanksgiving observances into meaning-full and spirit-full rituals and traditions. And you don’t have to be particularly religious to do so. To achieve this, you need only have a belief in God or some Higher Power and a desire to have this particular holiday become a spiritual experience. If you possess these, you are well on the way to creating a meaning-full and spirit-full holiday.

In addition, incorporating any or all of the following seven steps into a Thanksgiving celebration helps transform it into more than an opportunity to overindulge in edible delights.

1. Voice your intention to have a spiritual experience. You can simply state your intention aloud or write it on a piece of paper. Intention has an awesome ability to manifest. So, clearly intend that this Thanksgiving celebration will feel and be spiritual for you. Imagine that your intention serves as an invitation sent upward, outward, inward—wherever you believe God resides—to the Divine. After all, if you don’t invite God to dinner, God won’t know to show up.
2. Have faith that God will arrive. It’s difficult to have a spiritual experience if you don’t, first, believe in God or a Higher Power, and second, have faith that you can have an experience of God. You can’t “believe it when you see it” with God. You have to believe it so you can see it.
3. Develop the courage to let God in. Fear represents the largest thing that stops most people from having a spiritual experience. You may feel afraid of what the experience will be like, how it will change you, how it will affect your lives. You have to have courage to experience God. If you are too afraid to open the door when your dinner guest rings the bell, you’ll  dine alone.
4. Create a sanctuary. Your sanctuary might be a specially decorated and prepared space in which you plan to serve your Thanksgiving dinner. When you make the effort to create a sacred space for any celebration or holiday observance, you find your festivities automatically take on a more spiritual atmosphere and energy. In the Old Testament, God tells the Hebrews, “Build for me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among you.” (Exodus 25:8-9) Create a space in which God can “be” with you.
5. Remember to thank God. Create prayers especially for this day. If you don’t want to write your own prayer, use an existing one from your own faith or from some religious or spiritual tradition. Prayers, being what they are—words spoken to a Divine Power—automatically give your meal a sense of reverence and a spiritual bent. They cause you to remember God. In addition, be sure to offer prayers of gratitude to God for the good things in your life, not just for the food on the table. Go around the table and let each person voice a prayer out loud that speaks of the things for which they feel grateful. The Pilgrims specifically thanked God for surviving the harsh winter, for the food they had harvested and for the new neighbors–the Indians. Each person has at least one thing for which they feel particularly thankful and for which they can offer a personal prayer to God.
6. Have each person relate the miracles that occurred in their lives since last Thanksgiving. Go around the table again so each person has a chance to share all the miracles they can remember. These miracles don’t have to be large. They can be anything that just seemed special, unexpected, unusual, or miraculous in any way. They can be synchronistic events or goals achieved easily and effortless as if by an act of grace.
7. Take on the role of spiritual leader. Don’t rely on anyone else to make this year’s Thanksgiving observance a spiritual experience for you. Take responsibility and make it that for yourself and for the other people sharing the holiday with you. Don’t be afraid to try something new or to be creative. Bring spiritually symbolic items to your table or share spiritual readings. Orchestrate the meal in a way that feels spiritual to you, and other people will feel that energy as well.

By taking these seven steps toward a meaningful and spiritual Thanksgiving observance, you ensure that you not only invite God to your Thanksgiving celebration but that you feel— if not actually see—God sitting at your table.