The power of gratitude...

I was interested to read a columnist in a recent national newspaper who said she’s discovered that gratitude is becoming an important part of people’s lives during lockdown.

This columnist has escaped from a dark tunnel of alcoholism and mental depression. And she wants her page to be, and I quote “a place of positivity. She asked her readers for their help in keeping it that way. “You responded in droves,” she told them “and I have had the privilege of reading the ways you are keeping calm in these uncertain times. There have been too many emails containing tips and tricks for me to print here in all one go, so I will try to filter them out over the coming weeks. But as I read them, it occurred to me that they all had one thing in common: gratitude”

Among several stories in her column, my favourite is about a family in Hampshire. They sit down to dinner and each one offers up “three gratitudes - “one thing that’s worked well today; one thing that’s made them smile today; and one thing they appreciate today about someone sitting at the table.”

As we know in Christian Science, gratitude is a key to healing and Mary Baker Eddy puts great emphasis on this in her writings.

I think of gratitude as God’s warm sunlight bringing us out like spring flowers. Isn’t that the polar opposite of lockdown, a definition of which is “the confining of prisoners to their cells.” And aren’t people feeling rather like that now.

The Bible story of Paul and Silas’s imprisonment can be our prayer. In their lockdown, they prayed and sang praises unto God: And suddenly there was an earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed.” (Acts 16:25-26)

I'm not advocating an earthquake to break this lockdown! but it is just possible that we could shatter this sense of imprisonment with consistent gratitude. According to this columnist, that seems to be happening already and isn’t that another cause for gratitude?

 

 

 


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