Eucharisteo - Thanksgiving - Always Precedes the Miracle!

Non-Eucharisteo, ingratitude, was the fall - humanity's discontent with all that God freely gives.  We only enter into the full life if our faith give thanks.  Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives.  Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our YES! to His grace.  Thanksgiving is inherent to a true salvation experience; thanksgiving is necessary to live the well, whole, fullest life.

Psalm 50:23 - "He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God."

Thanksgiving - giving thanks in everything - prepares the way that God might show us His fullest salvation in Christ.  Thanksgiving - giving thanks in everything - is what prepares the way for salvation's whole restoration.  Our salvation in Christ is real, yet the completeness of that salvation is not fully realized in a life until the life realizes the need to give thanks.  In everything?

With memories of gravestones, hospital beds and smoking towers on television, I wonder....does the tear in the canvas of our life backdrop, the losses that puncture our world, our own emptiness, might actually become places to see...to see through to God.  Those situations that tear open our souls, those holes that spatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond...to Him...to God whom we endlessly crave.

Yes...Yes...Yes...That is what I want! but do I want it deeply enough to truly give thanks in everything?  Not just pretending to be thankful, but really, deeply, thankful.  Being in that place where giving thanks is in the same category as breathing...second nature, something I don't have to give thought to, it just happens.

Can we truly achieve this? Are we capable of looking so far past our own circumstances that we can actually be thankful for the sorrow, the broken heart, the physical pain.  Would that be the Miracle...to be fully removed from self?

My prayer is that each day my transformation to this state of truly, fully thankful brings me closer to the image of Christ that I aspire to reflect.