The more we understand God, the less opportunity there is for any hypocrisy to creep into our lives. If we are in the habit of thanking God but doing so without really understanding who He is, we have an important step yet to take.

To be entirely free of hypocrisy, our thanks to God must include gratitude for who He is. Otherwise our thanks may be largely empty. Such thanks may come close to patting ourselves on the back — especially if our emphasis is on thanking God for what  we have accomplished. It is comparatively easy to take the time to thank God for our blessings. It is more demanding to take the time to learn enough about God so that we know whom we are thanking. Mrs. Eddy explains, "If we are ungrateful for Life, Truth, and Love, and yet return thanks to God for all blessings, we are insincere and incur the sharp censure our Master pronounces on hypocrites."   ^{Science and Health, p. 3;}

Christian Science brings to light the nature of God, enabling us to give fuller meaning and significance to our offering of thanks. An understanding gratitude for Life, Truth, and Love leads us from the repeating of words to the expression of action. "Gratitude is much more than a verbal expression of thanks," writes Mrs. Eddy. She continues, "Action expresses more gratitude than speech."  ^ibid.;

Gratefully to acknowledge God as Life, Truth, and Love and to put an understanding of that fact into action gives us the ability to express truly meaningful thanks. We should wholeheartedly express activity that has its source in God. Each day of the year should be a day of rich thanksgiving. It might be well to examine our motives and be sure we are sincerely grateful for Life, Truth, and Love.

To be truly grateful for Life is to act in accord with Life. We follow closely that for which we hold a deep love, and if we love God, we love Life. God is Life. He is the very source and substance of true being. The more we love and understand Life, the closer we will draw to it and the more fully and effectively we will live it.

Because God is Life, Life must be eternal. It must be vital, whole and uninterrupted. Man is the likeness of God. He is the reflection, the representative, of God, Life. As the very expression of Life, man lives in perfection—in the full presence of eternity.

Every individual can begin now to prove his genuine and permanent relationship to Life. He can begin to be grateful for this relationship. He can begin to trust God and yield to Him as his only Life.

To be genuinely grateful for Truth is to act in accord with Truth. Truth is God and therefore the only Life there is. Truth is the ultimate and fundamental reality of all existence. It is the positive presence of absolute perfection. In divine Science, man abides at one with Truth. He is inseparably related to Truth. The activity of Truth unequivocally rules out the possibility of error. We experience freedom from error—absolute perfection—in the degree we consciously express Truth. As we understand this reflection of Truth, our actions are inevitably right. They are motivated by divine Science rather than by changeable, personal sense.

To be genuinely grateful for Love is to act in accord with Love. The understanding that God is Love enables us to be compassionate, kind, affectionate. We should protect the purity and goodness of our expression of Love so that it remains honest and unfeigned. To know that every real expression of love has its roots in God and to faithfully live and practice the nature of this love is to begin truly understanding God.

If we fail to understand Life, Truth, and Love — and thus our divine relationship to God — we may fall into the trap of measuring our gratitude by comparing our status with others, rather than humbly recognizing our need to understand God more fully. If so, then our giving of thanks is more a matter of words than action.

The hypocritical Pharisee prayed, "God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican."  ^{Luke 18:11;} The Pharisee did not understand Life, Truth, and Love. His expression of thanks was empty. But the publican was modest enough to recognize that he had much to learn. He humbly sought God's mercy. This attitude, described in the parable given by Christ Jesus, was clearly the quality of thought most receptive to God. Mrs. Eddy comments, "When the Publican's wail went out to the great heart of Love, it won his humble desire,"  ^{Science and Health, p. 448.}

Rather than basing our thanks on where we stand in relation to our fellowman—how much we have accomplished or accumulated—each of us can exercise a measure of humility and recognize our need to gratefully know God as Life, Truth, and Love. Then our gratitude becomes more a matter of action than of words.

True gratitude for Life, Truth, and Love leads to the abundant activity of good, free of hypocrisy and filled with genuine thanksgiving.

Nathan A. Talbot