Article April 2, 2018 Issue

Begin with gratitude

David Clark Scott

Adapted from a Daily Lift podcast on christianscience.com.

Healing and sports have something in common—the importance of not neglecting the fundamentals.

Golfers and baseball players, for example, often practice the basics of good alignment, a balanced stance, and getting their hands in the right position. Both pros and amateurs focus on these elemental concepts. I’ve observed that consistent spiritual healers also regularly return to the fundamentals—of prayer. And the Bible suggests that gratitude is one of the fundamental aspects of prayer.

In the book of Psalms you can find dozens of instances of thanksgiving to God. Gratitude opens our thought to God’s presence and to an explicit recognition of God’s goodness, power, and bounty. For instance, in Psalm 100 we read, “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name” (verse 4), and in Psalm 68, “Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation” (verse 19).

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