Article November 22, 1913 Issue

"Thanking God"

M. ELIZABETH FLANNIGAN

Some one has said, "Thinking good is thanking God," and at the Thanksgiving season this thought is especially pregnant with meaning to the writer, who has been learning that it is the duty as well as the privilege of every earnest Christian to live his thanks to God every day, thus being enabled intelligently to enjoy the day set apart each year for rejoicing and praise.

Mrs. Eddy says, "God is good" (Science and Health, p. 113), and from this definition of good it follows that to be thinking good is to be thinking godlike thoughts. And what are godlike thoughts? God is Love; therefore it means to be thinking loving thoughts to the exclusion of every unloving and unlovely thought; to the exclusion of every thought of fear, for "perfect love casteth out fear," with its rain of anxieties and discouragements. God is Truth. Then we are to think on the things that are true and real; and to have consciousness filled with true thoughts about God and man, dispels that which is untrue and unreal, in other words, all the false testimony of the material senses. The regeneration of thought and affection as described by St. Paul to the Colossians then takes place, that is, the putting off of the old and the putting on of the new, "which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." Again, God is Life. Then we are to think life-giving thoughts; and every true and loving thought which goes forth to comfort or uplift our brother man is a healing thought, and healing thoughts are life-sustaining and life-giving.

The effort so to spiritualize our thinking as to see that every thought we send into the world is a God-governed thought, can but result in true, loving, life-giving words and works, and this is manifestly "thanking God." It is the "singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord" which Paul admonishes, an endeavor to follow the example of the Master, which is "our proper debt to him and the only worthy evidence of our gratitude" (Science and Health, p. 4). This sort of thinking we can try to do every hour of the day and every day of the year, so that every day shall become a day of thanksgiving, not only for the blessings we have received, but for the harvest of good thoughts, words, and deeds we have been able to sow broadcast in God's vineyard. Well may we say with the psalmist, "Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation."

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