Article December 17, 1949 Issue

GOD'S GIFT OF GRATITUDE

MARGARETTA MAJOR HEENAN

Shortly after the writer became interested in Christian Science a practitioner said to her: "Now you have started to work out your salvation. Always remember, above all else, to be grateful." This wise and loving counsel to be grateful has been followed through many years, and no matter what problems have come, increased gratitude has always been a great help in bringing about their solution.

Mary Baker Eddy defines salvation as follows (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 593): "Life, Truth, and Love understood and demonstrated as supreme over all; sin, sickness, and death destroyed." Christian Science teaches that God is Life, Truth, and Love and that man, made in His image and likeness, reflects His nature. To know God as Life helps us to express righteous activity and silences the belief of life in matter; it teaches us that because Life is ever present, its opposite, termed death, is never present. To know God as Truth helps us to express righteousness and to know that since good alone is real, evil, the opposite of good, is unreal. To know God as Love helps us to express loving-kindness and forgiveness, to realize that we can never be separated from divine Love. This spiritual understanding brings great blessings.

When the Psalmist sang (100: 4), "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name," he must have realized that the giving of thanks to God helps us to enter His gates and His courts, or in other words to gain an understanding of the power and presence of God. Gratitude invariably unfolds more of this understanding. Christ Jesus prefaced some of his demonstrations, as recorded in the Bible, by giving thanks to God, thereby acknowledging His goodness and pointing out to his followers the way of gratitude and thanksgiving which heals. In "Retrospection and Introspection" Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 60), "Science saith to all manner of disease, 'Know that God is all-power and all-presence, and there is nothing beside Him;' and the sick are healed."

Enjoy 1 free Sentinel article or audio program each month, including content from 1898 to today.

Send a comment to the editors
NEXT IN THIS ISSUE
Article
KNOW THE TRUTH
December 17, 1949
Contents

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit