A Thank You is an Analogy
Give thanks to God always and to people when He works in them
If you are interested at all in being a great Christian, you have either asked the question yourself or heard the disparity between the Catholic and Protestant answers to "How are we saved?". I have friends that I will thank for something and they, knowing the goodness of God being truly the cause of every goodness, redirect (as it were) the thanks to God. "How are these related" you may wonder. Welcome to the subject of the post. It has everything to do with whether there is much wisdom in this action or if there remains the tiniest error. Every thank you from one finite, contingent good to the next, is never truly to fall upon the finite, contingent good, but include all the good transmitted to and through them. This is to say: an act of gratitude is applied to its source which is finally praise of God but also in the measure the finite, contingent being/good willed freely whatever is praised, the gratitude is analogically applied to them and analogically all that gave rise to them and their ability/inspiration to will the object of the gratitude, which is perfectly the case in God. A Thank you thus touch every finite good through which other goods came until it finally comes to rest on Goodness Itself, the other of the good that is man, and therefore the good that comes through him, and all this is known through answering the question of how we are saved.