It's January 8; we have all run out of excuses for not having written those thank-you cards by now.

And cards, or letters (remember them?) are what we'd like to receive rather than texts or emails, according to a poll for Clintons, the card retailers, which has a certain interest in this.

Its research shows nearly half of us would rather receive no thanks at all than a digital thank you. One respondent said: 'Call me a traditionalist, but an emoticon thumb from my nephew doesn't spell thanks to me. I don't expect gratitude for gifts at all, but I'd rather not be thanked that be sent a thumbs up via text.' A handwritten note or card, says Clintons, 'provokes at least double the level of excitement when compared to other forms of text based communication such as emails, mobile and online messages'.

The key, apparently, is the effort that's put in to thanksgiving – and there's a lesson here for Christians who thank God for his blessings at least once a week, in church, and perhaps every day.

It goes back to the linguistic origins of the word. According to Dr Philip Seargeant from the Centre for Language and Communication at The Open University, the phrase 'thank you' derives from the word 'think'.

'In Old English, the primary sense of the noun "thank" was "a thought",' he says. 'From there, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the meaning moved to "favourable thought or feeling, good will", and by the Middle Ages it had come to refer to "kindly thought or feeling entertained towards any one for favour or services received" – ie much the meaning it has today. We could therefore paraphrase its meaning as: "For what you have done for me, I think on you favourably."'

There's a tendency – understandable, but one to be resisted – to make our prayers of thanksgiving more like that unsatisfying and vaguely insulting thumbs-up emoticon than a proper Clintons card for which we have forked out real cash, written, stuck an increasingly expensive stamp on and taken to a post box. One is virtually meaningless; the other requires thought.

If we reconnect the word 'thank' to its origins in 'think', we'll do a better job of thanking God. Taking time to think through just what we are thankful for enriches both our experience of him, and of the good things he has given. There's much wisdom in the old song, 'Count your blessings, name them one by one.' Counting blessings requires thought – the sort of deep thought that gave rise to praise like Psalm 104, which carefully enumerates God's good gifts: 'How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures' (verse 24).

In place of the spiritual equivalent of that text or emoticon, why not try prayers of thoughtful thankfulness? In fact, even if you can't post it, why not write God a letter? It would focus the mind, and show you really mean it.

Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods