“To live gratitude is to touch Heaven,” Johannes A. Gaertner asserts (as does Pres. Monson).
The grateful heart is the grace-filled heart. Cultivating gratitude, is much like priming an old pump—it takes work but eventually the waters come rushing out (a little rusty tasting at the start perhaps).
Gratitude awakens our senses to the health and happiness we already posses (even if both are not the desired ‘full measure'). Gratitude opens our hearts to the love God has for us, and the wonders that surround us in the ordinary. Gratitude serves to magnify and enrich our blessings, our spirits and our relationship with others.
“Hem your blessings with thankfulness,” the saying goes, "so they don't unravel.”
Heart-felt words of thanksgiving are characteristics of divinity. So often during his mortal and post-mortal ministries the Lord gratefully acknowledged: “Father, I thank thee…” (Luke 10:21, John 11:41, 3 Nephi 19:20, 3 Nephi 19:28)
As a characteristic of deity, gratitude is to be mirrored in his children. Is it easy to keep the commandment to be thankful? Is it easy to take life with gratitude rather then for granted?
No. Absolutely not!
Heavenly Help and Promise
But our omniscient, loving Father in Heaven knows that and has provided for it.
“Ye cannot bear all things now,” he tenderly told the early Saints, “nevertheless, be of good cheer, for I will lead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the riches of eternity are yours.” (D&C 78:18)
Then comes the promise for those who accept the Lord’s leading:
“And he who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more.” (D&C 78:19)
Creed is Worthless without Conduct
Of course knowing the blessings that can come by pactising gratitude is worthless and meaningless without acting on it. Knowledge is always so. Just like the two blades of a pair of scissors...knowing and doing, faith and works...go together. (see Mere Christianity)
"Between the knowing and the doing," Henry van Dyke reminds us, "there is a deep gulf. Into that abyss the happiness of many a man slips, and is lost. There is no peace, no real and lasting felicity for a human life until the gulf is closed, and the continent of conduct meets the continent of creed, edge to edge, lip to lip, firmly joined forever."“Knowledge is only half of intelligence,” Nels L. Nelson reminds us in his magnificent Scientific Aspects of Mormonism. “To stop here is to be falsely educated.
“If, however, the truth perceived becomes a dynamic fact in a man's character...if, in short, it ceases to be something in a man, and becomes the man himself, changing the very color and texture of his soul, then knowledge has passed over into power — or character—or wisdom—or, to adopt the term used by Joseph Smith, has passed over into intelligence; and it is such a process alone that represents true education.”
One Way to Live Gratitude
So let’s say we decide gratitude is a blessing and strive to cultivated it...how does that look? How do live it?
“One way of expressing gratitude,” Richard L. Evans tells us, “would be to use well what we have—material things, talents, time, opportunities, sympathy, compassion.”
And that is the sum of this facet of glory.
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