What If Adam and Eve Had Just Been Grateful?
Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, a season to stop and give thanks. Just the word lifts the spirit. To say thanks is to celebrate a gift. Something. Anything. To say thanks is to cross the tracks from have-not to have-much, from the excluded to the recruited. Thanks proclaims, "I'm not disadvantaged, disabled, victimized, scandalized, forgotten, or ignored. I am blessed." Gratitude is a dialysis of sorts. It flushes the self-pity out of our systems.
In Scripture the idea of giving thanks is not a suggestion or recommendation; it is a command. It carries the same weight as "love your neighbor" and "give to the poor." More than a hundred times, either by impera¬tive or example, the Bible commands us to be thankful. If quantity implies gravity, God takes thanksgiving seriously.
Here's why. Ingratitude is the original sin. Adam and Eve had a million reasons to give thanks. The waterfalls and fowl, shorelines and sunsets. God found Eden so delightful, he strolled through it in the cool of the day (Gen. 3:8). Adam and Eve found the garden so safe, they wore no clothing (Gen. 2:25). They had nothing to hide and no one to hide from. They indwelt a perfect world. One with creation, one with God, one with each other. Eden was a "one-derful" world.
Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/if-you-choose-gratitude-will-your-world-be-different-130183/