Thanksgifted~

As we quickly approach perhaps the most sincere holiday ever created/celebrated, I can't help but notice all the giving of '30 days of Thanks.' Now, don't get me wrong... I'm a STRONG supporter in counting your blessings... but it's the 30-days part that just rubs me the wrong way.
I know 'why' the 30 days, so those of you who feel you need to explain that part, you don't. What I'm saying is I just DON'T LIKE IT. What is good about encouraging ourselves to be thankful for only 30 days straight?! Furthermore... I can't help but notice how much 'thanks' being given is circumstantial stuff. I read one the other day that read 'Today, I am thankful for the good job and nice house God has blessed me with.' Now, while, again, I support the counting of blessings, I just think that the root of thankfulness lies much deeper than with things that aren't leaving with us when we exit this life. I suppose I just feel--especially after losing most of my familiar circumstances this past year--that we need to think more ETERNALLY when it comes to our thankfulness.

In leu of this thought-process, I myself am thinking fondly on Thanksgiving--or the giving of thanks--in the form of what sole gift that we've all--*whether or not you've accepted it--received. We are ALL gifted in one entirely eternal way--God's ultimate gift and sacrifice--Jesus.
Yes, I am aware that Jesus in the 'reason for the season' when it comes to our society's Christmas-holiday...but I am thanking God today, not just for Jesus's birth...but for His sacrifice which gave ME the gift--as I have joyfully accepted it--of life never-ending and of the washing of all of my short-comings during this one.

Whether my circumstances are health or disease, big house or little house--or no house at all, good job, terrible job--or no job at all, feasts on my table or scraps in my lap, money in my wallet or dryer-lint in my wallet......
NEITHER of those awesome gifts are changed. Jesus still lived..and died..so that I MYSELF MAY LIVE and NEVER DIE, PERMANENTLY, and so that everything in me that is born of sin can be washed as white as snow each and every time I simply open my mouth and ask it to be!

That, is being gifted. And that is why it's not about a giving of circumstantial thanks, but rather, the ultimate GIFT received for which we all owe *at the very least* a monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, moment-by-moment thanks for~