Article September 11, 1978 Issue

Gratitude, the spearhead of healing

RUANNE Y. GENTRY

Sometimes we forget to be grateful. We are so overwhelmed—or hypnotized—by illness, lack, grief, that we feel there is little or nothing to be grateful for. And so we build up an imaginary wall between ourselves and the healing Christ and then retreat behind this wall to commiserate with ourselves. Instead, we need to be thankful that God is ever present and that because of this profound truth difficulties lie in the realm of hypnotic suggestions. If we realize this, feel it deeply through prayer, the imaginary obstruction to our spiritual realization will lose its appearance of reality; we will be healed.

Human thought usually puts the cart before the horse. We wait for some definite sign of change in condition before feeling grateful. Christ Jesus recognized that gratitude didn't have to wait. His precise observation of the human condition led him to say, "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe."John 4:48; It is natural for gratitude and confidence in God's power to precede healing in Christian Science.

Mrs. Eddy understood the potency of gratitude and its role in healing. For example, she says, "What is gratitude but a powerful camera obscura, a thing focusing light where love, memory, and all within the human heart is present to manifest light."The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 164. The light of Christ floods our consciousness as we are more than occasionally, or seasonally, grateful for our blessings and as we watch that our thankfulness is not confined to appreciation of the merely material or personal blessings and comforts. When we deeply appreciate and cherish our spiritual riches—our wealth of intelligence, love, joy, inspiration, freedom—we feel the divine energy of these qualities, the power of God, in every aspect of our lives.