Article November 23, 1940 Issue

The Focus of Gratitude

DOROTHY MARY HUTCHINGS

MOST people admit that gratitude is a desirable quality, and that it should be encouraged and cultivated, but many feel doubtful of their ability to express it under trying circumstances. "How can I be grateful when I am suffering, or poor, or unhappy?" they ask. "I shall be endlessly grateful when this burden is lifted from me, but just now it seems impossible for me to express gratitude." But is the task as impossible as it appears?

At first sight this attitude may appear reasonable, but on looking deeper we find that lack of gratitude arises from failure to recognize the spiritual creation as real and perfect, and from clinging to the material concept of a selfhood which is incomplete and unhappy. This selfhood, however, as Christian Science shows, has no real existence; it is but a distorted and unreal view of that which is in reality complete and perfect. If we look through the lens of materiality, we find disappointment, frustration, and loss, because in materiality there is no possibility of completeness. Not until the gaze is lifted to behold the facts of Spirit do we begin to comprehend the unity of good and the completeness of spiritual reflection; and, so doing, we understand something of that perpetual springtide of gratitude which so marked the life of our Master, Christ Jesus.

Mary Baker Eddy was written (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 164): "What is gratitude but a powerful camera obscura, a thing focusing light where love, memory, and all within the human heart is present to manifest light." Our great need, we may freely admit, is for more spiritual light. Yet, in the words of Isaiah, "we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness." Then, should not we bring to bear on our problems the focus of gratitude, which will draw the intermittent gleams of enlightenment into a steady beam under which these problems will disappear?

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