How can I thank my Heavenly Father for the blessings I receive?
Question
Dear Gramps,
I often find myself thanking Heavenly Father for the many blessings He gves me but not feeling true gratitude when I do so. I see blessings in my life and know that they are from Heavenly Father but I am unable to show or feel true gratitude. So my question for you is what can I do to change that? How can I gain and develop the Christ-like attribute of gratitude or any other Christ-like attribute for that matter.
Thanks for all you do.
Anonymous
Answer
Anonymous
It is easy to take the blessings we have from God for granted. Fighting that feeling is a tricky thing to do, but one thing that always works for me is to go out and try to be a blessing to other people. Friends, family, total strangers…especially any enemies. Take the blessings you have, and share them with others, whether it’s time, extra furniture, old clothing, or food for the local food pantry.
Christ set the example in this by being as big a blessing as possible to those around him. He shared his gifts with fellow Jews and the Roman soldiers alike. Social station and career were both irrelevant. Be it a ruler of the Jews, or ten leprosy-stricken beggars, Jesus’ love was extended to all.
As a side note from my own life, in giving of what I have to others, I more fully understand how much I have been given to begin with. The experience brings me more joy than most anything else I do.
Count our many blessings, name them one by one. And as we count those blessings we will better see what the Lord has done. People first. Am amazed at my good fortune of being married to a wonderful lady. If we had not met most likely neither of us would ever have joined the church. Our children are a direct blessing. Yes they turn my hair grey, but they are a blessing and a hope to our future. Any base human can find fault in our fellow man, it takes a moment or two of direct thought to find the good rather than the bad. Second is to think about the value of our blessings. Often say that I could not afford to stop paying tithing. It is an easy thought to understand but is rather harder to quantify properly. Kinda puts the onus on us to see the blessings thereof.
As we offer thanks we need to identify different blessings in our lives. Naming the same old group is not the path to gratitude even if they are blessings we are thankful for. Sometimes we may be surprised by the multitude of gifts we have received, most likely because we have taken many of them for granted as Gramps suggested. Being reminded makes it a somewhat easier step to see the universe of blessings we live within.
The people we are priviledged to associate with at church. I know neat people who are not in our church but the most dense concentration of grand people are those I see on sunday and on other days. This is one of the easiest blessings to ignore but without the gospel there would not be such concentrations of people we can relax at being with. It is also a easy blessing to ignore because as mortals we are so able to see the faults of others, and even worse, once we identify the faults of others it so easy for us to carp about them. The twin evils of faultfinding and gossip are the fastest way of blinding us to the many positive things we enjoy through the people we know.
We can’t be the blessing we want to be to others until we realize the sheer multitude of blessings we live within. That almost every one of these things are blessings to almost everyone else does not dispell how amazing a world he has caused to be created for us.