Article October 2, 1989 Issue

Gratitude: not an option, but a law

Being healed is certainly a reason for feeling grateful. But did you know that gratitude itself can bring healing?

Barbara Cook

A friend appeared at my front door one day last summer and handed me a sweet-smelling little flower. "Thank you," I smiled, as I reached out to take it from him. Later, after he'd gone, I realized how accustomed we are to thinking of gratitude as a feeling or expression that comes after something has been received or experienced. But this isn't all there is to gratitude, as I discovered some years ago when I learned a powerful lesson about the place of gratitude in Christian Science healing.

I'd been out of college a couple of years, and for various reasons that seemed good ones to me, I was feeling rather unhappy about my life. I was also discouraged about several small growths on the bottom of one of my feet, which had become so hard and painful that I had difficulty walking. I had been praying about this condition—and I remember thinking how grateful I was going to be when the healing came!

While I was waiting to have something to be grateful for, a friend came to town and called to ask how things were going. And I told him. I guess I really spread the complaining on thick, because the first thing he did when I slowed down was to remind me of a statement Mrs. Eddy makes in the Manual of The Mother Church: "Gratitude and love should abide in every heart each day of all the years."^{ Man., Art. XVII, Sect. 2.} And because, as he then pointed out, this statement is part of a church By-Law, I needed to understand that gratitude was a law to be obeyed, not a suggestion or an option.

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