The Power of GratitudeA grateful heart a garden
is, How empty are our conceptions
of Deity! We admit theoretically that God is good, omnipotent,
omnipresent, infinite, and then we try to give information to this
infinite Mind. We plead for unmerited pardon and for a liberal outpouring
of benefactions. 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. Gratitude is much more than a verbal expression
of thanks. Action expresses more gratitude than speech. One of the least acknowledged spiritual qualities is gratitude. In our modern world we pay the price for goods received, because we have to do this. This is demanded. Unfortunately, in the process we loose sight of this vital quality of our humanity that connects us with the great heart of divine Love. We need to correct this loss of a divine quality in our lives. The human economy has drifted far away from the platform of the divine economy, but it really should pattern the divine. The development of gratitude in our lives is evidently an element of our spiritual development that we cannot afford to neglect. In a metaphoric sense, it was really the lack of gratitude, above all else, that got Adam expelled from the Garden of Eden. Ingratitude and indifference are all too often blocking factors on the way to healing. If God is Love, how can we not acknowledge this love, reflected in ourselves in the form of gratitude? It appears that gratitude is our pathway to God. Mary Baker Eddy commented on Mary Magdalene's affection for Christ Jesus in the house of the Pharisee. The rich host had provided no water for his guest to wash his feet, a sign of curtsey, but she had washed his feet with her tears, had dried them with her own hair, and anointed them with a fragrant and costly oil. Mary Baker Eddy writes under the
heading, I find it increasingly appropriate
that Mary Baker Eddy's above statement on gratitude is located in the chapter, Christian
Science Practice, which is coincident with the highest element on the
foursquare matrix in the column of the river Hiddekel. Mary Baker Eddy has
defined this river as "divine Science understood and acknowledged." The top
element in this column is also the element to which the first half of the
painting Christian Unity belongs, and and its verse below, and also the
respective stanza for this element possition from the Lord's prayer enriched by
Mary Baker Eddy with the spiritual sense of it (see S&H 17). For Christian Science brings to
view And Love is reflected in love
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