It isn’t uncommon anymore to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner and have people looking at their phones. Some of them hardly look up and some of them just glance from time to time. I am from the latter crowd. I’m gonna glance from time to time. I don’t want to miss anything!

This isn’t a rant against looking at your phone, but there is an important point to make about it, which is, you can’t stare at your phone and hear at the same time. It’s physiological fact. The Journal of Neuroscience reports that people who are focused on visual tasks can’t hear what’s going on around them because hearing and vision originate
from the same region of the brain.

Researchers have dubbed this hearing deficit: ‘inattentional deafness.’ Inattentional deafness is why surgeons need an assistant to keep track of the incessant beeping and buzzing monitoring equipment makes, while they are operating. If they want to avoid making a mistake and accidentally killing someone on the operating table, somebody else has to pay attention to the machines.

Just like you can’t stare at your phone and listen at the same time, you can’t gripe and be thankful at the same time. It’s a spiritual fact. The Bible tells us gratitude and murmuring originate from the same organ. The heart. Proverbs 23:7 For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Proverbs 4:23 Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

It’s almost irresistible to see all the negative things going on all around us and not grumble and complain about it. I struggle with it on a daily basis. Oh, who am I kidding? I struggle with it on an hourly basis! Yet for our mental and spiritual health, we must do as Scripture commands us to do. “In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” ~1 Thessalonians 5:18

May God bless you with a truly thankful Thanksgiving… even if you do look at your phones!