In the light of his vision that is the perspective that allows him to be grateful that things are not worse he has found his freedom and joy: his thoughts are peace, his words are peace and his work is peace.
What will you and I give for Christmas this year? Let us in our lives give to our Lord and Savior the gift of gratitude by living His teachings and following in His footsteps. It was said of Him that He “went about doing good.” As we do likewise, the Christmas spirit will be ours.
I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you[for helping me]. I almost feel as if You ought to be grateful to ME, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity. . . I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you, by giving you an opportunity of assisting me.
This is a wonderful time to be living here on earth. Our opportunities are limitless. While there are some things wrong in the world today, there are many things right, such as teachers who teach, ministers who minister, marriages that make it, parents who sacrifice, and friends who help. "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. If ingratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues."
A grateful heart ... comes through expressing gratitude to our Heavenly Father for His blessings and to those around us for all that they bring into our lives.
A prayerful life is the key to possessing gratitude. We often take for granted the people who most deserve our gratitude. Let us not wait until it is too late for us to express our gratitude. Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. If I gratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues. To express gratitude is gracious and honorable, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live with gratitude ever in our hearts is to touch heaven.
All looks yellow to a jaundiced eye that habitually compares everything to something better. But by changing that habit to comparing everything to something worse, even making it a game, that person can find gratitude, relief and happiness where-ever they go and whatever they experience, guaranteed!
The world breaks everyone or nearly everyone, of their childish illusions, assumptions and wishes, often painfully and afterwards due to the personal growth in practical experience, insight and the resulting wisdom many are strong at the broken places just like mended broken bones often are, and some people even have the great insight to be grateful for the purifying fire.