Have you ever stopped to ask, “What does it really mean to give thanks?”  “Is it simply to say to someone the words ‘thank you’?”  And if so, “why those words?”

Well, the English word “thank” has its roots in the Old English, þanc, meaning “thought, gratitude.”  It shares an etymology with the English word “think,” which has its roots in the Old English, þencan, which means “to think or consider.”  And both come from the Proto-Germanic þankaz and þankijaną.

In early Germanic languages, the notion of thankfulness was the idea that we hold someone in our thoughts, that we acknowledge in our mind a good that has been done to us.  To be thankful is to think favorably of the good bestowed on us by another.

And so, to “give thanks” is to express that thought.  Here’s why it matters.  In the accelerating pace of life, I’m afraid we too often skip the think and go straight to the thank.  Rather than taking the time to truly “think or consider” what someone has done for us, we immediately proceed to expression, almost out of reflex, with a quick “thank you!” 

Today, even the expression itself has been truncated—we just say “thanks!” or text to someone the even shorter “TY!”  One might legitimately ask, are we really giving thanks when there is, at most, a mere half-second of thought behind it?

Psalm 100 begins by acknowledging that the Lord is God, that he made us, that we’re his people, and concludes with the observation that the Lord is good and his love endures forever.  Between those thoughts, the Psalmist says:

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,

    and his courts with praise!
    Give thanks to him; bless his name!

Texting God a “TY” doesn’t really cut it—and it shouldn’t for our fellow man either.  Perhaps this Thanksgiving we all could take a little more time to first think our thanks, and then give them.