You probably know by now that I have a soft spot for language, for an etymology or a translation that reveals a different facet of a common phrase. It’s easy, of course, to be tripped up by what language teachers call “false friends,” words that seem similar to English ones but mean something else entirely. And it’s all too common—especially among preachers—to put too much meaning on the “literal translation” of a phrase. Words, after all, mean more than the sum of the literal meanings of their parts: what they mean is what they mean in context, not what we can extract from a dictionary.

Caveats notwithstanding, I’ve always simply loved the following fact: The day that we call “Thanksgiving” in American English is known to Spanish speakers as El Día de Acción de Gracias, and to French Canadians as l’Action de Grâce, which—to perhaps lean on a “false friend”—you might over-literally translate as “the Day of the Action of Grace.”

Now to be clear, that’s an insight that’s less interesting than it sounds. Acción de gracias and action de grâce are simply how you say “giving thanks” in Romance language, and this has been true for thousands of years. If an ancient Roman wanted to thank you for holding the door, she’d say gratias tibi ago. English is a pirate language: we’ve simply plundered the vocabularies of French and Latin such that “action” and “grace” existing alongside words like “giving” and “thanks.”

But after years of practicing gratitude (grati-tude—there it is again!) in a generic sense around Thanksgiving, I find myself refreshed by this question: Not just “What are you thankful for?” but “What has been the action of grace in your life?”

For me, this flips the question around. If I try to reflect on my own gratitude, I find myself turning inwards. It’s a question about my own feelings about things. It’s a kind of nagging remind that I really ought to feel grateful for all sorts of things, even when I’m tired or frustrated or sad about something else.

But to look for the action of grace—that’s something else entirely. That’s a question that turns me outward. That’s a question that asks me to look for someone else’s action in my life, for God’s action in my life. It has very little to do with what I am feeling, and very much to do with what someone or something else is doing.

So what about you? As we head toward Thanksgiving Day, what are you thankful for? Or maybe—what has been the action of grace in your life this year?