In God I find a precious gift
That knows no fear, no feud,
That glows so still, serene and pure:
The gift of gratitude.

It brightens all the paths of earth,
Reflecting Truth and right,
For gratitude doth steadfastly
Abide in heavenly light.

With confidence it hails each task,
With courage undismayed,
For naught against Infinity
Can ever be arrayed.

In seamless gratitude I weave
A silent, healing prayer,
With shining threads of ceaseless joy;
For man is God's great heir.

—Violet Ker Seymer
The Christian Science Hymnal, Hymn 146

This is the time of year when many people in North America celebrate a day of thanksgiving, taking time out to remember blessings they are thankful for, and sharing their gratitude with friends, neighbors, and family. It's a tradition that dates back four centuries, not specific to any religion, but embraced by people of many faiths, races, and ethnic backgrounds.

This year, however, with continuing conflict in many parts of the world, millions unemployed, and governments, businesses, and individuals facing debt, it might seem hard to find reasons to be grateful—or perhaps even more important than ever to express thanks for any evidence of good.

Gratitude always has a healing role to play in our lives, even when we face tough times. It's a powerful quality that brings immense blessings when used liberally. The effect of being grateful is similar to airing out a musty room. The more fresh air you pour in, the better the atmosphere. Gratitude uplifts thought, encourages fresh perspectives, and warms hearts. It makes our days go better.

When I was young, my parents taught me to write thank-you notes. As I grew older, I began to understand that expressing gratitude is more than a nicety. It's essential to wholesome living. It's not so much for the person thanked, as to demonstrate one's own integrity. It's a spiritually healthy and responsible way to live.

Gratitude is love in action. It shows that you're not always thinking about yourself. It's about kindness and care for others, an act of unselfishness. It's a way of giving back to the one who gives. Gratitude is the lubricant of happy relationships, healthy attitudes, and a spiritual outlook. Gratitude is a quality of God manifest—a vital expression of one's spiritual individuality. It's not a duty we should feel obligated to perform, but an act of grace we should be eager to share. Expressing gratitude keeps us out of the dark hole of self-absorption, or preoccupation with materialism or empty consumerism.

The benefits of gratitude, and the poverty of ingratitude, can be found in Jesus' parable of the prodigal son. He didn't appreciate the blessings he had under his father's protection. He was into himself and wanted to live it up in the world, party hard, goof off, and be lazy. In fact, he was so ungrateful and disrespectful that he asked his dad for the inheritance he would eventually get, but was too impatient to wait for.

After he'd enjoyed a romp, the son's lust for money and amusement led him to moral and financial ruin. It was only after he'd really suffered that he began to come to his senses—his spiritual senses—and a glimmer of gratitude for what he had foolishly left behind flickered within. He went home, humbly admitted to his father how wrong he'd been, and was immediately forgiven and welcomed back into the family (see Luke 15:11–24).

There's a strong lesson to be gained from this story: "Be grateful!" You need gratitude not just for outward blessings such as a job (no matter how humble), a roof over your head, food in the refrigerator, or a shirt on your back. You need it even more for spiritual riches such as love, happiness, wisdom, health, and the strength of God that makes us whole beings. Temporal things vanish swiftly, but the riches of divine Love are ours forever.

As children of God, our lives are bountifully endowed with the capacity to love, act wisely, and stay healthy. These are gifts from God. If co-workers are mean, we can love them back with the wide, limitless love that comes to us from God. If we're facing a mountain of debt, we can remain calm, being grateful to God for His constant flow of wisdom that will reveal how the bills can be paid. Gratitude is like opening the refrigerator door and finding all the meals we need for the foreseeable future. God's goodness is always at hand. Gratitude opens our eyes to its presence.

Some years ago, I was asked to tackle a project at work that I really didn't want to do. As far as I was concerned, it was a cumbersome chore, an uninspiring task, a huge and unnecessary imposition on my time and talent.

After a while, I sensed that I was harboring a pretty bad attitude, and I prayed for a more spiritual, healing perspective. I tried really hard to find something to be grateful for. I told myself that my life was more than the task before me. It was about expressing God's qualities of love and joy faithfully and consistently, which were independent of what I was doing with my hands and fingers.

I began an attitude adjustment by thanking God for my spiritual capacities—for my ability to reason, remain alert, and live meaningfully. I liked to live! And as my heart filled with a more generous spirit, the begrudging attitude faded. I saw my way to a quick completion of the project, and moved on to the next task with eagerness and joy. Gratitude made the job far easier, and the outcome was much happier than if I'd grumbled and fussed the whole time.

Sentinel founder Mary Baker Eddy once asked, "Are we really grateful for the good already received?" And she continued: "Then we shall avail ourselves of the blessings we have, and thus be fitted to receive more. Gratitude is much more than a verbal expression of thanks. Action expresses more gratitude than speech" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 3). Gratitude is a form of spiritual mindedness that enables us to discern and experience blessings that are not apparent to the physical senses. As children of God, we are richly endowed with intelligence, peace, and the capacity to remain content. Where the corporeal senses see want, gratitude finds supply. Where the five senses see disease, pain, and suffering, gratitude finds health, freedom, and pain-free living. Gratitude enables us to see things spiritually.

When as a young man I worked on the family farm, I had periods of back trouble. To toss around heavy potato sacks, 100-pound bales of hay, and bags of fertilizer or seeds, or whatever else needed moving, a good strong back was essential. But mine wasn't working so well anymore. At times, I'd limp around for several days unable to lift much at all.

One day, while trying to carry even relatively light loads of firewood into the garage, I couldn't do it. For the first time, I got serious about praying for relief. I began by considering where real strength and ability come from. I realized I had been relying upon raw muscle and will-power to get my work done. I really needed to start honoring God as my only source of strength, and this was going to require gratitude—even though I was still in pain and unable to lift much at all.

I prayed to understand better how the wisdom and intelligence of the one Mind, which is God, empowered me to perform my appointed tasks ably and wisely. I was helped by this passage from Science and Health: "Right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action" (p. 454). And I reasoned that if my motive was to glorify God and evidence His wisdom at work, then no harm could come from my actions.

Within a few days of this prayer, my back adjusted. I could again work long hours without feeling any pain. In fact, I can't recall having any further back difficulties over the past 30 years. What I had learned was that gratitude heals the physical body when the consciousness governing the body is filled with the love, peace, and comfort that come from putting God first.

It's easier to see why gratitude is so vital to success in spiritual healing when one considers the bane of its opposite—ingratitude. Ingratitude is a denial of God's goodness, an affront to spirituality, a defiance of blessings present. It suggests indifference, self-absorption, self-pity, laziness, material mindedness. It's an ugly state of mortal mind, unpleasant to entertain, heavy and burdensome.

On the other side, gratitude lights the way to spiritual prosperity. It restores hope, lightens thought, opens consciousness to spiritual reality, sees the good that proves elusive to material sense, and heals mind and body with divinely enlightened views.

Gratitude sees God's goodness and the supply that pays the bills, resolves conflict, and renews hope. It's a bit like watching an artesian well spout water from the ground. An observer may not know where the water comes from, how far it's traveled, or how big the reservoir underneath it is, but the presence of the fountain cannot be denied. God's goodness is that way—an infinite source of provision that meets every human need. Gratitude opens thought to perceiving what was in place all along.

In the Bible story of the loaves and fishes, Jesus demonstrated the value of gratitude. There were 4,000 hungry men to feed, along with women and children. What did Jesus do? "He took the seven loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude" (Matt. 15:36). He gave thanks! He didn't run around in circles waving his hands in the air and crying, "What are we going to do? There's no food, and we have so many hungry mouths!" No. He stayed calm. He began feeding the multitude by offering thanks to God.

Jesus had such a complete understanding of God as Provider of all, that there was apparently no doubt in his mind that divine Love had already provided for every man, woman, and child—even before the food was evident. He recognized the "artesian well" of divine Love as supplying all human needs. The multitude was well fed, and there were baskets of food left over. And it all began with thanks to God—the ultimate form of gratitude, and a model for all of us to follow today.

The value and benefit of gratitude cannot be overestimated. As a rock climber needs rope and pick to scale high peaks of granite, the spiritual traveler needs gratitude to ascend the path of Spirit and behold the unbounded riches of divine Love already built into our being. Gratitude is more than a human acknowledgment of God's blessings. It is evidence that we accept those blessings and do not doubt their presence. With pressing needs around the world today, there is no better time for recognizing the abundant care of divine Love, which meets those needs, and for expressing gratitude for it. |css