Gratitude
Those who never receive a testimony of Christ will be judged according to their works and their knowledge but will not be held accountable for their testimony.
Once his calling was to hand out toys in nursery and put them away later – it took years before he recognized that his calling was important to those children.
The Lord instructed the Saints in Jackson County, Missouri, in 1831 that their prayers and thanks should be directed heavenward. The early Saints were given a revelation about how to keep the Sabbath day and how to fast and pray.
They, and we, were told by the Lord how to worship and give thanks on the Sabbath. As you can tell, what matters most is the love we feel for the givers of the gifts. Here are the Lord’s words of how to give thanks and how to love on the Sabbath:
“I give unto them a commandment, saying thus: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength; and in the name of Jesus Christ thou shalt serve him. …
“Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things.
“Thou shalt offer a sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in righteousness, even that of a broken heart and a contrite spirit.”
A broken heart and a contrite spirit will eventually carry anyone to all spiritual blessings.
One blessing for which we can be grateful is that we are there in that sacrament meeting at all, gathered with more than one or two of His disciples in His name. There are some at home unable to rise from their beds. There are some who would like to be where we are but are instead serving in hospitals and providing public safety or are defending us at the risk of their own lives in some desert or jungle. The fact that we are able to gather with even one other Saint and partake of the sacrament will help us begin to feel gratitude and love for God’s kindness.
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Of all the blessings we can count, the greatest by far is the feeling of forgiveness that comes as we partake of the sacrament. We will feel greater love and appreciation for the Savior, whose infinite sacrifice made possible our being cleansed from sin. As we partake of the bread and water, we remember that He suffered for us. And when we feel gratitude for what He has done for us, we will feel His love for us and our love for Him.
The blessing of love we receive will make it easier for us to keep the commandment to “always remember him.”
Our ability to feel gratitude for simple things ensures that our gratitude will be appropriately significant fit the more obvious things.
I am grateful for the many Sundays I taught a deacons quorum in Bountiful, Utah, as well as a Sunday School class in Idaho. And I even remember the times I served as an assistant to my wife in the nursery, where my main task was to hand out toys and pick them up.
It was years before I recognized through the Spirit that my simple service for the Lord mattered in the lives of Heavenly Father’s children. To my surprise, some of them have remembered and thanked me for my fledgling attempts to serve them for the Master on those Sabbath days.
Just as we sometimes cannot see the results of our own service given on the Sabbath, we may not be able to see the cumulative effects of other servants of the Lord. But the Lord is building His kingdom quietly through His faithful and humble servants, with little fanfare, toward its glorious millennial future. It takes the Holy Spirit to see the growing grandeur.
Recognizing the limitations of our vision is important to keeping people humility in our perspective.
I left Albuquerque to go to school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There was one chapel and a district that stretched across much of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. I drove the hills of that beautiful country to sacrament meetings in tiny branches, most in small rented facilities or little remodeled homes. Now there is a sacred temple of God in Belmont, Massachusetts, and stakes that spread across the countryside.
What I could not see clearly then was that the Lord was pouring out His Spirit on people in those little sacrament meetings. I could feel it, but I could not see the extent and the timing of the Lord’s intentions to build and glorify His kingdom.
Given a few decades, these grand developments become recognizable to our limited vision.
I have felt that transformation of growing gratitude for blessings and a love of God increasing across the Church. It seems to accelerate among members of the Church in times and places where there are trials of their faith, where they have to plead to God for help to even carry on.
Tests are a method if building us and solidifying our character.
You might well be wondering what you could do to live and worship on this Sabbath day to demonstrate your gratitude and to strengthen yourself and others for trials that lie ahead.
You could begin today with a private and family prayer of thanks for all God has done for you. You could pray to know what the Lord would have you do to serve Him and others. Particularly, you could pray to have the Holy Ghost tell you of someone who is lonely or in need to whom the Lord would have you go.
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