Article March 2, 1929 Issue

Gratitude

LILY ROSE BULLOCK

Much has been written about gratitude, but the subject still remains inexhaustible. It is easy enough to be grateful when something pleasant comes along; but what about those times when everything seems to be going wrong, and vexing problems appear to have no solution? To one student, whose belief in an unhappy disposition and in discordant surroundings had long been a stumblingblock to her progress, gratitude had always remained something of a mystery, until one day the glorious thought dawned on her consciousness that if there were nothing else in the world to be grateful for, one could still be grateful to God for making man in His image and likeness. She saw that the ever-presence of God meant also the ever-presence of the real man, and that man could never cease expressing God.

The illuminating statement in Genesis, "God created man in his own image," read often before without the slightest accompaniment of joy, suddenly turned the darkness into light. So the student came to see that it did not much matter what mortal mind had to say about any situation; that all its suggestions concerning lack, discord, inability to cope with adverse circumstance, heartache, sin, and fear, were but futile attempts to separate the son from the Father. It was her privilege to rejoice in the glorious fact that when the morning stars sang together the sons of God shouted for joy, expressing their gratitude.

Think what would be the result if evil were as real as good; if sickness, sin, and death were basic facts upon which the universe were built; or if the Word in the beginning included discord, and discord were therefore ineradicable! All would then be "chaos and old night;" but such a condition is unthinkable. God, divine Mind, maintains all identities. Divine Love clothes, feeds, cares for, and enfolds every idea in brooding tenderness. God, Spirit, is never for a moment absent from His creation; He is absolutely inseparable from even the least of His ideas. Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, presents the true condition of the universe when she says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 514): "Mind, joyous in strength, dwells in the realm of Mind. Mind's infinite ideas run and disport themselves. In humility they climb the heights of holiness."

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