The Sunday before Thanksgiving, I was asked to speak in church. Here are some of my thoughts from reflecting and pondering on gratitude:
In thinking about thankfulness and being grateful, I have
noticed that Pres. Monson speaks to this topic often. He has spoken more than once about Jesus and
healing the ten lepers. This is found in
Luke17:
11 ¶And it came to pass, as
he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.
12 And as he entered into a
certain village, there met him ten men that were alepers, which stood afar off:
14 And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the apriests. And
it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.
15 And one of them, when he
saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God,
I have thought over the years a lot about why 9 of the men
that Jesus healed would not have thanked Him.
I usually come to the conclusion that they were just so
caught up in the moment and overwhelmed with the joy and preparation of going
to show themselves to the priest to be pronounced clean, that they just didn’t
pause to say thanks. It dawned on me
this week, that there could have been other reasons.
Maybe they were healed but they were consumed with other
issues going on that they didn’t feel thankful.
Maybe just after one of them was healed, they found out their donkey
died and they would have to walk to the priest and it was a long way away. Maybe they were mad about the way Jesus had
healed them. Maybe they had expected
their healing to be a more elaborate affair. Maybe they were bothered that though they were
healed their skin itched intensely and they were consumed with that. Maybe they had another issue and they were
hoping Jesus would heal that too and He didn’t.
Maybe they felt entitled and didn’t think they should thank
Him. Maybe they felt He was just doing
His job.
We, as humans, find many reasons to not feel thankful.
I was having a great time these past few weeks thinking
about gratitude and all the great blessings in my life.
Then near the end of the week, there were a couple things
that didn’t go my way. It made me feel
sad and even mad and a little discouraged.
It wasn’t as fun to think about all the way Heavenly Father had blessed
me with. It was easier to feel bugged
and concentrate my thoughts in that direction.
That is when I found a quote from Pres. Monson that I had
marked sometime before. I thought it was
interesting that I would find this in the midst of what was going on. This is from his general conference talk 2
years ago. Here is the quote:
When we encounter challenges and problems in our lives, it is
often difficult for us to focus on our blessings. However, if we reach deep
enough and look hard enough, we will be able to feel and recognize just how
much we have been given.
Pres. Thomas S. Monson
“The Divine Gift of Gratitude”
This helped me to realize that the true measure of our
gratitude to our Heavenly Father is not to thank Him when things are going
great but to be able to find the ways He is blessing and helping us in the
midst of challenges and problems.
This isn’t a new thought, but I feel that Heavenly Father
wanted me to have this experience so that I would share it in my talk. This sounds pretty basic, but I feel that
someone else in this congregation besides just me, was supposed to have that
reminder today.
Pres. Monson spoke about counting our blessings in the most
recent general conference. Let me remind
you what he said:
We are blessed
with so very much. And yet it is sometimes difficult to view the problems and
permissiveness around us and not become discouraged. I have found that, rather
than dwelling on the negative, if we will take a step back and consider the
blessings in our lives, including seemingly small, sometimes overlooked
blessings, we can find greater happiness.
I would
recommend this same exercise to you—namely, that you take an inventory of your
life and look specifically for the blessings, large and small, you have
received.
I
know that all of us have been given blessings that we haven’t even
considered. I think that Pres. Monson is
trying to tell us that the more we consider on the many blessings God gives us,
our view opens and we see can even more.
Blessings that we had not even considered before.
My
favorite movie of all time is “It’s a Wonderful Life”. I like to watch it sometime during the
Christmas season and so I will be watching it again soon! George Bailey has some tough breaks in his
life and is consumed by his problems, which are large. He is given an opportunity to see how much he
has been blessed. It has a quick happy
ending but that is because it is a movie.
But the concept is the same for our own lives: Even when things aren’t going so well, we
need to search for all the ways Heavenly Father is blessing and helping us.
Coming
back to Pres. Monson, in his general conference talk from 2 years ago, he also
mentions another experience of Jesus and gratitude.
As [Jesus] traveled in the wilderness for three days, more than 4,000
people followed and traveled with Him. He took compassion on them, for they may
not have eaten during the entire three days. His disciples, however,
questioned, “Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness, as to fill
so great a multitude?” Like many of us, the disciples saw only what was
lacking.
“And Jesus saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? And [the
disciples] said, Seven, and a few little fishes.
“And [Jesus] commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground.
“And he took the seven loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to his
disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.”
Notice that the Savior gave thanks for what they had—and a miracle
followed: “And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the
broken meat that was left seven baskets full.”
A miracle followed when Jesus expressed thanks for what they
had, though it wasn’t nearly enough. I
had read this scripture story many times and had never taken it to be a story
of expressing thanks. I really
appreciated Pres. Monson’s thoughts on this.
In talking about being thankful, I haven’t mentioned yet how
much easier it is to think about the things that are wrong. Last week, I got to listen to one of my
favorite talks by Elder Holland, The Tongue of Angels and it was great to be
reminded of a few things he said that deal with the topic of negativity and
complaining:
I love what
Elder Orson F. Whitney once said: “The spirit of the gospel is optimistic; it
trusts in God and looks on the bright side of things. The opposite or
pessimistic spirit drags men down and away from God, looks on the dark side,
murmurs, complains, and is slow to yield obedience.” 6 We should honor the Savior’s
declaration to “be of good cheer.” 7 (Indeed, it seems to me we
may be more guilty of breaking that commandment than almost any other!) Speak
hopefully. Speak encouragingly, including about yourself. Try not to complain
and moan incessantly. As someone once said, “Even in the golden age of
civilization someone undoubtedly grumbled that everything looked too yellow.” I
have often thought that Nephi’s being bound with cords and beaten by rods must
have been more tolerable to him than listening to Laman and Lemuel’s constant
murmuring. 8 Surely he must have said at least
once, “Hit me one more time. I can still hear you.”
Yes, life has
its problems, and yes, there are negative things to face, but please accept one
of Elder Holland’s maxims for living—no misfortune is so bad that whining about
it won’t make it worse.
It
doesn’t take any special giftedness or smartness to see what is lacking in a
situation. It sometimes does take
looking deeper or pondering to find what is good or hopeful in a situation. And if there is anything I have learned in
life, it is that our Father in Heaven can masterfully make something good
happen in the midst of any situation, no matter how bad it may seem.
In
fact, I wonder if this is one of the most important lessons He would like for
us to learn in this life.
Almost
always, with any blessing, there are always aspects of it that may not be
good. For example, in the pre-earth life
when we learned we would have this earth to come to and gain a body, we shouted
for joy. Now, here on earth, we see that
it is not always easy to shout for joy.
Everyone was given a wonderful body to use while we are here. This is a huge blessing. But even with this huge blessing, things go
wrong. Our body doesn’t always work the
way we want it to. We get sick, body
parts break down or don’t work right.
But even with the things that go wrong, the blessing of having a body
and learning all the lessons from having one, are practically innumerable.
It
is a great blessing to have children, but sometimes those children don’t listen
to what we tell them, don’t make good choices, and it makes us feel stress or
disappointment. Sometimes when children
are small, all their needs can be overwhelming and hard for us to always
appreciate them. Or you may even have
the great blessing of a child going on a mission and you may miss them
intensely. Or you may have the privilege
of loving someone so much and then you lose them to death.
The
trick in this life is to play the “Glad Game”.
Any of you who have seen the movie or read the book “Pollyanna” are
familiar with this game. It is to find
something positive or hopeful in any negative situation that you might
encounter.
It
seems to me that Pres. Monson is asking us to play the glad game.
He
said : We can lift ourselves and others as well when we refuse to remain in
the realm of negative thought and cultivate within our hearts an attitude of
gratitude.
I
want to repeat this thought of Pres. Monson’s again:
When we encounter challenges
and problems in our lives, it is often difficult for us to focus on our blessings.
However, if we reach deep enough and look hard enough, we will be able to feel
and recognize just how much we have been given.
If
we cultivate this ability, then when things happen that we can’t find any good
in, we will have developed enough faith to know that God isn’t finished yet. Or maybe we are just having some of those
experiences so that we can appreciate when things do go well.
Let’s
always try to be the tenth leper. Even
when things aren’t going well, let’s make miracles happen by concentrating on
the great blessings we are all still receiving from God all the time. For some, it will require thinking hard and
digging deep, but I think Jesus and Pres. Monson were trying to show us that
miracles occur when we take the time to be thankful always.
I
would like to end with a couple thankful scriptures. The first is found in Alma:
37 aCounsel with the Lord in all thy doings,
and he will direct thee for bgood; yea, when thou liest down at
night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and
when thou risest in the cmorning let thy heart be full of thanks
unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day.
Alma 37:37
And this scripture from Psalms that
my mom used to always repeat to me as a child which is one of my very
favorites:
