For Your Heart Today

As we enter Thanksgiving week, many of us prepare to gather around tables filled with food, gratitude, and tradition. Yet for followers of Jesus, this season is more than a celebration — it is an invitation to step into truth, lament, justice, and hope.

Today’s message calls us to love the stranger, confront the myths we’ve inherited, and see Thanksgiving through a gospel lens: one that tells the truth, laments what is broken, honors the original stewards of this land, and points us toward shalom — God’s vision of wholeness and restoration for all creation.

This message will challenge, stretch, and deepen us. And it will invite us to rise in hope.

3 Takeaways 

1. Truth-Telling

Thanksgiving without truth becomes sentimentality. Thanksgiving with truth becomes holy.

We tell the truth because the gospel compels it — and because reconciliation cannot begin without it.

2. Lament

Lament is not despair. It is honest grief before God that makes room for healing and hope.

Lament keeps our hearts tender and responsive to justice.

3. Hope-Filled Action

Shalom comes through repentance, repair, justice, solidarity, and radical welcome — including welcoming immigrants, refugees, Indigenous neighbors, and the strangers among us.

Breath Prayer

Inhale: Open my eyes to truth…

Exhale: …and guide my steps toward justice.

Full manuscript — estimated reading time: 16–18 minutes