Article January 19, 1924 Issue

Rejoice Evermore

GEORGIA CLAAR

STRESS has been laid upon the fact that healing is greatly facilitated through rejoicing and gratitude. Many healings take place during the Wednesday evening testimony meetings in the Christian Science churches. May not a reason for this be the gratitude welling from the hearts and lips of so many of God's children? Some time ago the writer attended a Wednesday evening meeting where a student told of an experience in which there had been a wrestling with a belief in sickness that did not readily yield. The student asked himself the questions, Am I rejoicing enough? Have I been rejoicing enough to-day? The answers being in the negative, he began rejoicing there and then for blessings received, Healing followed.

This seemed well and good; and it set at least one hearer thinking. Can one rejoice merely through a determined effort to thank God? Just why should a thought of thankfulness aid in bringing about a healing? In the Scriptures we are commanded to rejoice evermore. This may be taken to mean that we are to rejoice in time of tribulation as well as in time of victory. One of the Beatitudes commands that we "rejoice, and be exceeding glad" even during persecution. The children of Israel seemed rarely to rejoice. At each new trial with which they were confronted, murmuring and complaints were heard, instead of songs of thanksgiving for deliverance from past difficulties. And as a result, the journey to the land of promise took forty years, whereas with more frequent rejoicing it might have been accomplished in a shorter time. May not the present-day "children of Israel" ask, Is the journey from sense to Soul being delayed because of murmurings and complaints?

There is a hymn in which the words, "Open thou mine eyes," are frequently reiterated, in order that the goodness with which God has surrounded us may be emphasized. The spiritual definition of "eyes" given by Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 586) is in part: "EYES. Spiritual discernment,—not material but mental." Thankfulness opens the eyes of "spiritual discernment," and reveals God's goodness to His children. The writer has been especially grateful for a thought which was gleaned from a recent reading of the authorized Christian Science literature, and which she desires to pass on to others. It is that thankfulness is not merely a number of spasmodic verbal expressions of gratitude; is not a single act; thankfulness is a mental attitude which results in right action.

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