“Love is the way I walk in gratitude.”
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.
Britney Shawley added:
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.
