Is Thankfulness Scriptural?

I spent some time with my Nave’s Topical Bible looking at thankfulness verses. Nave’s is a cool book that organizes Bible verses by topic. You can find it online, but I like the paper version better. Guess I need to spend more time reading, because while I read a lot about thankfulness to God (Psalm 100, for example), there wasn’t much about being thankful to others. First Thessalonians 5:18 says, “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God.” I suppose that would be a good one to talk about, but I am still not satisfied with it.

Then I pulled out the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. Have you seen this book? I have a copy that was my grandfather’s, and it’s sat on my shelf gathering dust for years. My dad fussed at me awhile back when I mentioned I didn’t find it useful. It’s filled with cross-references! he said. I don’t know why I never noticed it before; it actually is very very cool. (See here for the online version.) You look up a verse you are interested in, and you’ll find a bunch of related verses for that part of the verse right under the reference. But I didn’t find what I was looking for.

I’ve heard that thankfulness and humility go together, but I cannot find the connection scripturally (although it makes sense logically). Like Lee told David, when we say thank you, we’re saying thank you for more than the gift. We are recognizing the love and care that went into the gift, and expressing gratefulness for this act of love. Maybe I should be looking at how love behaves. Any thoughts or Scripture references? I have to figure it out myself before I can even begin to explain it to a four year old and two year old.