Article June 12, 1971 Issue

There's Jam in Your House, Too

BARBARA JOY HENDERSON

Of the various qualities making up a truly Christian life, gratitude is one of the most vital. Why? Because it is through gratitude that our "cup runneth over," as the twenty-third Psalm phrases it. We might say that without gratitude the cup is bottomless, and no matter how much is poured into it, it can never be filled, much less overflow with abundance. Gratitude bases the cup of thought, making us fit to receive the good which constantly flows from God to all His beloved children.

It may be comparatively easy to express gratitude for favors received, but how does one do so sincerely in the face of lack, sickness, inharmony, grief, injustice, and the rest of the tribe of mortal ills? Suppose, though, that we found that those mortal ills are nothing but self-deceived and self-deceiving illusions—and therefore powerless. Would not this evoke our constant, eternal gratitude?

Christian Science, interpreting the sustaining truths set forth in the Bible, teaches us exactly this. Reasoning from the declarative statement in Genesis, "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good,"^{Gen. 1:31;} this Science concludes that evil, the opposite of good, must be nonexistent since God never created it. As Mrs. Eddy writes in the textbook, Science and Health: "All reality is in God and His creation, harmonious and eternal. That which He creates is good, and He makes all that is made. Therefore the only reality of sin, sickness, or death is the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human, erring belief, until God strips off their disguise. They are not true, because they are not of God."^{Science and Health, p. 472;}