By Jaymi Firestone | November 19, 2018

When Thanksgiving rolls around, we all give a nod to the Pilgrims and Native Americans, and we talk about the harsh winter in the “new world.” We think about the first slaughtered turkey and the harvest they worked hard to cultivate.

But as Christians, the deepest roots of thanksgiving date back long before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in the 1600s.

Actually, the true roots of thanksgiving date back 2000 years to a time when a sacrifice was made that was far greater than that of a turkey being sacrificed to feed a table of Pilgrims.

You could call it the true story of thanksgiving, or maybe just the Christian description of the so often undervalued term, “gratitude.”

Either way, it should be the one thing we as Christians are most thankful for.

We were created for thanksgiving.

No, I’m not talking about being created to stuff your face with a plate full of carbs and turkey. I’m talking about God creating humanity for gratitude.

Our entire existence is to appreciate God. He created us to honor Him by appreciating both who He is and His actions that sustain our very existence.

Part of what the first man and woman were created to do was honor God by being thankful. And part of what we exist to do is honor God by being thankful — and that is where the numerous biblical commands requiring gratitude come from.

Humanity was created to appreciate God. But sadly, ingratitude seems all too familiar; for the first man and woman, and ourselves.

The fact is, we all have failed miserably in appreciating God as we should.

We keep reliving the Garden story.

Satan wanted more. More power, more glory. At his root, Satan is an ingrate, and he sank his venom into the heart of Eden. Satan’s sin became the first sin of all humanity: the sin of ingratitude. Adam and Eve were, simply put, painfully ungrateful for what God gave to them.

Isn’t that the jumping off point of all our sin?

Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We always hunger for something more.

Satan created a complete lack of thankfulness in Adam and Eve, who in turn, passed it along to all of us.

Jesus entered into our thankless world, lived in flawless appreciation of his Father, and He died for us, to cover our chronic ingratitude.

It is Jesus who lived a perfect life of thankfulness.

Jesus is not only God himself, but everything a thankful human embodies. He not only died to forgive our failures in giving God the thanks He’s due, but also lived the perfect life of appreciation on our behalf.

Luckily, by our faith in Jesus, we are cleansed of our chronic ungratefulness and its eternal penalty.

Only because of Jesus are we able to become the kind of thankful people God created us to be.

Jesus, the only true embodiment of gratitude and love, went to a cross, suffered immense pain, and died, to save us from the sins we continually commit.

So this Thanksgiving, take a moment to remember the sacrifice Jesus made, and thank God that He sees beyond our ungratefulness because of Jesus’ blood.