Article November 26, 1955 Issue

GRATITUDE

ROBERT E. HEISSERMAN

The Psalmist reveals a unique appreciation of gratitude in his words (Ps. 67:3–6): "Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. ... Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us." He saw that gratitude to God, good, properly precedes God's blessing—the experience of ever-present goodness and well-being.

Christ Jesus must have had this same concept of gratitude, for before raising Lazarus from the grave he said (John 11:41, 42): "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me." The Master was always conscious that man's life is not in or of matter, as the material senses claim. He understood man to be immortal—God's expression, spiritual, indestructible, eternal. Gratitude is indigenous to consciousness which knows no disease, death, fear, lack, or defeat.

Through the consecrated study and living of Christian Science, gratitude is found to be not so much an expression of thanks for that which has happened, or is about to happen, as it is thanks for that which always, divinely, is. Gratitude is completely independent of the testimony of the material senses, since it is based on that which they cannot know—on that which can only be spiritually discerned. Gratitude comes to one as the result of interpreting the universe from the standpoint of divine Principle.

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