Gratitude is a lesson hard to learn for those who look upon the world amiss. The
most they can do is see themselves as better off than others. And they try to be
content because another seems to suffer more than them. How pitiful and
deprecating are such thoughts! For who has cause for thanks while others have
less cause, and who could suffer less because he sees another suffer more? Your
gratitude is due to Him alone Who made all cause of sorrow disappear throughout
the world.
It is insane to offer thanks because of suffering. But it is equally insane to
fail in gratitude to One Who offers you the certain means whereby all pain is
healed, and suffering replaced with laughter and with happiness. Nor could the
even partly sane refuse to take the steps which He directs, and follow in the
way He sets before them to escape a prison that they thought contained no door
to the deliverance they now perceive.
Your brother is your "enemy" because you see in him the rival for your
peace; a plunderer who takes his joy from you, and leaves you nothing but a
black despair so bitter and relentless that there is no hope remaining. Now is
vengeance all there is to wish for. Now can you but try to bring him down to lie
in death with you, as useless as yourself; as little left within his grasping
fingers as in yours.
You do not offer God your gratitude because your brother is more slave than you,
nor could you sanely be enraged if he seems freer. Love makes no comparisons.
And gratitude can only be sincere if it is joined to love. We offer thanks to
God our Father that in us all things will find their freedom. It will never be
that some are loosed while others still are bound, for who can bargain in the
name of love?
Therefore give thanks, but in sincerity. And let your gratitude make room for
all who will escape with you; the sick, the weak, the needy and afraid, and
those who mourn a seeming loss or feel apparent pain, who suffer cold or hunger,
or who walk the way of hatred and the path of death. All these go with you. Let
us not compare ourselves with them, for thus we split them off in our awareness
from the Unity we share with them, as they must share with us.
We thank our Father for one thing alone; that we are separate from no living
thing, and therefore one with Him. And we rejoice that no exceptions ever can be
made which would reduce our wholeness, nor impair or change our function to
complete the One Who is Himself completion. We give thanks for every living
thing, for otherwise we offer thanks for nothing, and we fail to recognize the
gifts of God to us.
Then let our brothers lean their tired heads against our shoulders as they rest
a while. We offer thanks for them. For if we can direct them to the peace that
we would find, the way is opening at last to us. An ancient door is swinging
free again; a long forgotten Word re-echoes in our memory, and gathers clarity
as we are willing once again to hear.
Walk then in gratitude the way of love. For hatred is forgotten when we lay
comparisons aside. What more remains as obstacles to peace? The fear of God is
now undone at last, and we forgive without comparing. Thus we cannot choose to
overlook some things, and yet retain some other things still locked away as
sins. When your forgiveness is complete you will have total gratitude, for you
will see that everything has earned the right to love by being loving, even as
your Self.
Today we learn to think of gratitude in place of anger, malice and revenge. We
have been given everything. If we refuse to recognize it, we are not entitled
therefore to our bitterness, and to a self-perception which regards us in a
place of merciless pursuit, where we are badgered ceaselessly and pushed about
without a thought or care for us or for our future. Gratitude becomes the single
thought we substitute for these insane perceptions. God has cared for us, and
calls us Son. Can there be more than this?
Our gratitude will pave the way to Him, and shorten our learning time by more
than you could ever dream of. Gratitude goes hand in hand with love, and where
one is the other must be found. For gratitude is but an aspect of the love which
is the Source of all creation. God gives thanks to you, His Son, for being what
you are; His Own completion and the Source of love, along with Him. Your
gratitude to Him is one with His to you. For love can walk no road except the
way of gratitude, and thus we go who walk the way to God.
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