The Thanksgiving Day celebration is a much-loved annual event in North America, but its power for good can be more than seasonal. It can become a good influence on the future, as well as provide an occasion for appreciating the past.

Mary Baker Eddy writes, "Gratitude and love should abide in every heart each day of all the years." ^{Manual of The Mother Church, Art. XVII, Sect. 2;} And the annual emphasis on giving thanks provides us with an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the purpose of expressing this abiding gratitude. One can use the opportunity to see why we should make the effort to be grateful "each day of all the years," how we can accomplish it, and what we can expect to develop as the result of constant thankfulness.

When spiritual understanding reveals the grand realities of God-created being, one cannot help but admit that every individual on earth has much to make him grateful. The Bible reveals the nature of God, the creator, as infinite divine Love, filling all space. It describes Him as supplying good gifts to His spiritual offspring, continually and without measure. Recognizing this, the Psalmist sang, "My cup runneth over." ^{Ps. 23:5;} And James wrote in his Epistle, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." ^{James 1:17;}

The Father of lights is the Father of all. Every person on earth, no matter how barren his human experience may temporarily seem to be, can claim that God is his divine Father and that he is God's spiritual offspring. He can know that he is the heir to a rich inheritance of spiritual qualities and ideas—that love, joy, peace, satisfaction, comfort, activity, and a hundred other spiritual attributes truly belong to him under divine law. In fact, he can be gratefully certain that they belong to everyone else on earth as well. God has no favorites, but is as impartial in His giving as the sun is in its shining.

No one is left out of God's divine affluence, and no one can be deprived or depleted at any time or anywhere. God is the source of all being, is infinite good, the inexhaustible fountain of divine Spirit, and He maintains His ideas—His immortal men and women —in a condition of beauty and abundance.

The understanding of spiritual facts such as these must have inspired Christ Jesus' giving of thanks before he fed the multitude. Gratefully he acknowledged the love of God, and he commended the expression of gratitude by others. For our guidance today he left his own example of perpetual trust in God and thankfulness for His care—an example that Christians have reason to follow faithfully.

From childhood most people are encouraged to say "thank you" for gifts and favors received. This simplest form of acknowledgment is an elementary social grace that humanity expects from neighbors, however young in years. But is this all there is to Christian gratitude —a mere formal mouthing of words? Experience shows that the gratitude that truly satisfies includes much more.

However eloquent a verbal acknowledgment may be, if a gift is stored away in its wrappings and never used the words will be woefully empty. There can be no real satisfaction for either giver or receiver unless through actual utilization of the gift there is tangible evidence of true appreciation.

Christ Jesus indicated that gratitude and love are best expressed in more than words. He said, "If ye love me, keep my commandments." ^{John 14:15;} He emphasized that true appreciation goes deeper than verbal homage, and is active.

Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "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." ^{Science and Health, p. 3.}

Anyone who is really grateful for a gift will surely avail himself of it—he will use it; and rich rewards go to him who expresses his gratitude by using the spiritual ideas that God gives. As we avail ourselves of the presence of these ideas—express them in our thoughts and deeds—we strengthen our grasp on inexhaustible good and bring it increasingly to light in daily life.

At this current stage of our development in spiritual understanding, we have done little more than gather a few nuggets from the immense treasures of Soul that God has prepared for us. Limited as they are by a material, finite, corporeal sense of existence, human beings are incapable of discerning the depths and heights of the beauty and grandeur of divine being.

But abiding gratitude brings light to the human mind—light that reveals not only the blessings we have already experienced, but increasing recognition of the immensity of the riches that are waiting for us to enjoy.

Thanksgiving Day can be a day of development. It can be a day not only for remembering and acknowledging past blessings but also for renewing our efforts to avail ourselves more freely of God's infinite spiritual gifts in the future—resolving to use them more consistently than ever before. Then, in gratitude that is made practical through actively expressing the spiritual qualities and ideas that God gives, we shall have continually more abundant evidence of their presence.

Naomi Price