THIS THURSDAY, people in the United States will celebrate—complete with traditional turkey and cranberry feasting—the holiday known as Thanksgiving Day. And the United States is by no means the only country to recognize a national day of thanks; many nations and cultures celebrate days of thanksgiving and traditional harvest festivals, some dating back centuries.

Expressing gratitude to God has deep, strong roots around the world. There's something unmistakably wonderful about gratitude. Anyone who has felt gratitude knows its sterling, transforming power. Gratitude heals. Many contributors to the Sentinel have explained how counting their blessings and identifying even the smallest evidence of good in their lives have pulled them out of the depths.

Speaking about gratitude, Mary Baker Eddy wrote this: "Are we really grateful for the good already received? Then we shall avail ourselves of the blessings we have, and thus be fitted to receive more" (p. 3). This statement appears in the first chapter of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, titled "Prayer," and points to the value Christian Science places on recognizing past good in order to find present inspiration and healing.

Sometimes, though, we just don't feel grateful. We're angry about unfair circumstances, discouraged about prospects for peace in the world, suffering chronically, sunk down in grief. Or we've made guilt-producing mistakes that land us figuratively—like the Bible character Jonah—in the "whale's belly."

There appears to be nothing to be grateful for in times like these. But is there? Our sister publication, the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lessons, publishes an annual sermon on the subject "Thanksgiving." And this year's sermon talks a lot about this man Jonah, offering some surprising insights.

At first glance, Jonah's story might appear to have much more to do with thanklessness and selfishness than with a grateful heart. Jonah chooses to ignore God's desire that he proclaim His grace to Ninevites—people living in the capital of the fearsome Assyrian Empire, located in modern-day Iraq. Jonah scorns these people as cruel and bloody, deserving of punishment. And he deliberately ignores God, traveling 180 degrees in the opposite direction from Nineveh, on a ship bound for Tarshish.

When the ship is threatened with breaking up in a violent storm, and the crew wakes him from sleep, Jonah begins a conscious turn back toward helping himself and others. He confesses that his disobedience to the divine will has caused their severe plight. He persuades the mariners to cast him into the sea. This ends the storm—and causes them to begin praising God. And soon, right there in the belly of a whale, Jonah turns to his own prayer of gratitude: "I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving" (Jonah 2:9). Then, rescued and back on dry land, he finally goes to preach God's message to the Ninevites.

There's a good message here for all of us. As Jonah learned, giving thanks isn't something we have to wait for in a perfectly peaceful world, when we've solved all our problems and attained some illusive state of human perfectionism. But right in the depths of our own problems, we can be grateful that God has given us the ability to proclaim, give voice to, the truth that He is good. That through understanding that we are the reflection of His perfect nature, we can and will contribute to healing the world's ills. We can each declare, today—to ourselves and others—that the act of gratitude is not a task but a pleasure. Gratitude is not a curse but a privilege, not something to fear but something to embrace.

It's interesting to note how often prayers of thanksgiving come in advance of the desired healing effect that prompts them. Jonah didn't wait to get out of "the belly of hell" before he found something to praise; he learned the lesson of proclaiming what he knew of God's good will in the presence of his own darkness and ignorance.

Gratitude before the fact. Think what that means for each of us as we consider the state of the world. It means we don't have to fret over the appearance that healing is distant or that we've messed up our lives. Instead, we can say to God, right here and now, "I will wash mine hands in innocency: so will I compass thine altar, O Lord: that I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works" (Ps. 26:6, 7). icss