At a Wednesday evening testimony meeting in a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, a student of Christian Science testified about being healed of a number of difficulties that had confronted her. "One problem right after another," she said. She didn't give in to discouragement, however. Even when the last problem presented itself, one that loomed larger than all the rest, she joyously thought to herself, "Just think what I'm going to get out of this!"

This was her way of giving thanks in advance for the lessons, spiritual growth, blessings, and healing that she knew would come from trusting herself again to God's loving care. And the joyous expression of gratitude that sprang from her lips attested to the beautiful healing that did indeed follow.

It was such gratitude that our beloved Master and Way-shower, Christ Jesus, expressed before raising Lazarus from the grave (see John 11: 1-45). The Bible narrative tells us: "Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me." Then he called, "Lazarus, come forth," ^{John 11:41–43.} and he did immediately.

Our Master possessed the understanding of eternal life as no one else. He understood that man, God's image and likeness, could no more die than could God, eternal Spirit. As he lifted his thought in gratitude for what he knew to be spiritually true, he also lifted the thought of Lazarus and those present from the material sense testimony of death to the evidence of the omnipresence of Life and immortality.

The gratitude to God we feel in our hearts is in proportion to our spiritual understanding and promotes healing. It recognizes God's goodness as already here. The love of God can appear wherever we look—in a smile, a flower, or a kindness shown. We must be grateful for these little things that brighten our days, else we're not fitted to receive the greater blessings and proofs of God's loving care.

In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy, we read: "Gratitude is much more than a verbal expression of thanks. Action expresses more gratitude than speech." ^{Science and Health, p. 3.} Gratitude is a living power in the hearts of all serious students of Christian Science. They are unceasingly grateful to God, the Giver of all good, for Christ Jesus and his exemplification of Truth. They are grateful for Mrs. Eddy, who brought mankind the promised revelation of Truth and who established a Church dedicated to the practical demonstration of Christ Jesus' teaching. They are also grateful to all the workers in their movement, past and present, who have, contributed to the Cause of Truth and for all Christian disciples in other churches who have adhered to our Master's teachings.

The prayer of gratitude, in its highest sense, is not merely a request for good. It is thanking God for the ever-presence of good. It is a joyous recognition that all good is from God and is present here and now through His law of unlimited good. This kind of gratitude is scientific prayer that reverses the false beliefs that good is material and limited, that some of God's children have access to it, while others suffer from a lack of it.

The gratitude one feels for spiritual good envisioned but not yet fully understood is surely blessed. It is a form of prayer and faith that, when persisted in, culminates in the spiritual understanding of good for which one prays and gives thanks and which results in healing. As the Epistle to the Hebrews states: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." ^{Heb. 11:1.}

In Science spiritual understanding and gratitude are one. Gratitude for the good that comes not only to us but to others shows that we understand God's impartial law of good and His ever-present flow of abundance. Gratitude is the channel that, when kept open and active by our reflecting love, kindness, unselfishness, and thoughtfulness to others, multiplies itself for us in an increasing supply of good.

Ingratitude, on the other hand, denotes an opposition to good. It is poverty itself, a concomitant of evil, or what Christian Science terms animal magnetism. This limited and ignorant state of thought invites envy, hate, and especially discouragement. The failure to demonstrate good more fully in our lives often results from a limited sense of gratitude and sometimes from disobedience. This is not to imply, however, that all those with a wealth of material affluence are the most grateful or that the poor are necessarily ungrateful. Far from it. Many with modest incomes express more real gratitude, more real satisfaction and joy, than many others who have amassed great material wealth. The point is that our sense of gratitude must be spiritualized, whatever our present human situation, so that we are more alive to the abundant riches of God, which are wholly spiritual.

Prayer in Christian Science beholds man as the spiritual reflection of his Maker, God. This prayer of spiritual sense reflects thought at one with God, divine Mind. As we gratefully acknowledge the allness and goodness of Mind—its omnipresence, omnipotence, and nature as divine Love—we are able to perceive Love's perfect image right where a sick or sinful mortal seems to be. The more we know of our true identity as God's image and likeness, and the more we claim it, the more we become aware of our divine inheritance of good, of health and holiness.

Gratitude for the truth that health is the spiritual fact of being opens the way for knowing that God doesn't recognize disease. This realization has healed incurable diseases. This was proved by Mrs. Eddy, who writes in Unity of Good, "... When I have most clearly seen and most sensibly felt that the infinite recognizes no disease, this has not separated me from God, but has so bound me to Him as to enable me instantaneously to heal a cancer which had eaten its way to the jugular vein." ^{Un., p. 7.}

When the right understanding of health is established in thought, the body must necessarily respond accordingly, which proves that the spiritual and harmonious consciousness is the true health.

A Christian Science practitioner was asked for treatment for a serious physical problem by a man who was just beginning to study Christian Science. She explained to him the unreality of disease and its powerlessness, since God didn't make it or know anything about it.

The new student's thought was so filled with self-pity, complaint, and remorse that it seemed very hard to reach him. So the practitioner mentioned the important part that gratitude plays in the healing process. The man said that he'd be grateful all right if he was healed, but frankly he didn't know how he could be healed if God didn't know anything about his problem.

The practitioner, after praying for a moment for the right answer, for something the new student could understand, said words to this effect: "This morning after doing my laundry I decided to hang the clothes outside to dry and take advantage of the beautiful sunshiny day This required more effort than to run the clothes through the drier, but then, they always smell so good when dried in the sun!

"Now, the sun didn't know a thing about the wet clothes, and in order to reap the benefit from the sun's rays, I had to place the clothes out under them. This is just how it is with God's healing law. Even though God doesn't know a thing about disease, sin, lack, or any other evil, since He made only good (and we have divine authority from Genesis 1:31 to believe this), we can avail ourselves of this all-harmonious law of good by placing ourselves under it. As we reach out to God, divine Mind, for the spiritual ideas which heal the false beliefs that bring on our problems, we are bathed in His light and our prayers are answered. As thought is purified and spiritually uplifted by prayerful study of the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, it becomes receptive to divine Mind's unfolding ideas and healing is assured."

After thinking for a moment the new student said: "I can buy that! This is really some bit of light, and I'm grateful for it!"

A much-increased sense of gratitude was soon apparent as he diligently prepared himself for the healing that later followed. He began to grasp that he had much more to be grateful for than he had realized; things that he had taken for granted were now recognized as blessings. Instead of feeling sorry for himself, he began to claim his blessings daily and to recognize God's goodness reflected in many things he had never noticed before. As he gratefully identified himself as being a rightful heir to God's kingdom of good, he became receptive to the prayerful treatment the practitioner was giving him and was healed.

One of the hymns in the Christian Science Hymnal sums it all up beautifully: