Article September 25, 1937 Issue

Gratitude the Magnifier of Good

FRANCES ETTINGE

"O Magnify the Lord with me," exclaimed the Psalmist. What a grateful heart must his have been to perceive the magnitude of God's goodness; what a loyal heart to proclaim it! For gratitude is indeed a magnifier of God, good, a magnifier of all that is true about God and man, Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, refers to this blessed gift as "a powerful camera obscura, a thing focusing light where love, memory, and all within the human heart is present to manifest light" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 164). Think what enlightenment would take place in the world's thought were all to turn sincerely to God in gratitude for His many blessings!

The Christian Scientist's gratitude for the revelation of Truth and the demonstration thereof, is an active power in the world today to awaken thought to the ever-presence of God's goodness. For big or little blessings, he always thanks their Giver, knowing well the source of all goodness. He pours forth his gratitude to God for His tender, loving provision of needful things. At such times he becomes conscious of what the Master must have realized when he so humbly, gratefully, blessed the bread. Let us never forget that he gave us a living example and not a dead rite. Only thus could he reflect the living God and show forth man's likeness to Him. Only by our following, in ever-increasing degree, this pattern in our own lives can we get the fullest meaning of Christ Jesus' words and acts. When he thanked God that He had heard him at the grave of Lazarus, was he not really thanking God for the opportunity to magnify Life, Love, perfection?

The magnitude of Love, of Life, of Truth, which self-pity and ingratitude obscure, comes to light in the camera obscura of gratitude. Gratitude opens the door to the recognition of the omnipotence of Spirit, and man's protection under divine law. Where gratitude reigns there is no anxious thought, no lack. Soaring and singing above the mist of material mesmerism, he who is grateful borrows stamina and stimulus from the one source, and rests in the allness of divine Love.

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September 25, 1937
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