How important it is that we entertain gratitude for the protection and other blessings vouchsafed us daily by our Father-Mother God, divine Principle. Recognition of the spiritual source of all the good that we experience makes us more receptive to God's ever-operative beneficence. Gratitude, consistently maintained in thought, virtually acknowledges the allness of God, good, and thus helps to protect one from the claims of evil. Gratitude companions with, and helps to promote in one's thought, such gracious qualities as unselfishness, humility, generosity, patience, and good will.

Gratitude for the ever-present perfection of God and His spiritual creation in the face of evidence to the contrary corrects erroneous conditions. Because of his grateful awareness of God's healing presence, Christ Jesus was able to annul all manner of disease and sin and to raise the dead. We are told that before he started to feed a multitude with a few loaves and fishes, he first gave thanks to God.

A hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal reminds us (No. 249),

An accession of merely material things cannot give one true contentment or joy. Who has not had the experience at one time or another of very much desiring something material only to find that the objective, when attained, gave him no real satisfaction? That which truly satisfies has its origin in the all-loving, all-sustaining God, Spirit, Soul. David affirmed (Ps. 145: 16), "Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing."

Because man's supply is provided by infinite Mind, it is abundant, perpetual, inexhaustible, and ever available. Man, the beloved child of God, is forever complete, perfect, and harmonious, lacking nothing for his well-being and happiness. A grateful and consistent realization of these unalterable spiritual facts destroys a sense of lack and results in plentiful supply for one's daily needs.

Mars' Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 3): "Are we really grateful for the good already received? Then we shall avail ourselves of the blessings we have, and thus be fitted to receive more." Gratitude for one's present possessions makes one more resourceful in the use of them.

A young woman asked a Christian Science practitioner to help her through prayerful metaphysical work to find better living quarters, for which she had looked in vain. This friend affirmed that man, as God's idea, is always in his own special place in Mind, where spaciousness, beauty, and order are found. It was recognized that the student in reality possessed the qualities of love, wisdom, and gratitude and that divine Principle, Love, always present to meet the human need, would unfold to her the right manifestation of home.

In a short time the young woman told the practitioner that the work for her could cease because she had been awakened to gratitude for the apartment in which she lived. Ideas as to how she could make it more attractive and convenient had come to her, and she had already begun to act upon them.

It is important that we cultivate thankfulness for the good qualities of those with whom we are associated in the home and elsewhere, instead of emphasizing their faults. Complaint, criticism, or faultfinding contribute nothing to harmonious living; on the contrary, they exclude it. Recognition of the unreality of error and a grateful acknowledgment of the ever-present spiritual perfection of his own true selfhood and that of others will free the student from strife and friction and aid in his spiritual progress.

When one is faced with sickness, sin, or some other serious problem, it is especially important to entertain gratitude for the immutable perfection of God and His reflection, man. To question why one is forced to contend with error gets one nowhere, while gratefully to affirm the omnipotence of God, Life, Truth, Love, and courageously to challenge error's claims to place and power bring healing. We cannot charge God with causing error of any kind, for He is divine Love, infinite good, and can impart only that which is wholly beneficial to His creation.

The student cannot help being grateful as he grows in his understanding that God, ever-present Truth, Life, and Love, is governing, guarding, and sustaining His ideas at all times and constantly imparting all good to them. Our Leader, whose daily living was characterized by her gratitude to God, divine Principle, comments in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 307): "What a glorious inheritance is given to us through the understanding of omnipresent Love! More we cannot ask: more we do not want: more we cannot have. This sweet assurance is the 'Peace, be still' to all human fears, to suffering of every sort."