LDS Place

Sixteen-year-old Louisa Mellor Clark was the oldest living child of James and Mary Ann Mellor, who crossed the plains in the Martin handcart company. Louisa recorded the following incident in her journal:

“The first snowstorm left about two feet of snow on the ground, and we began to feel very nervous. We had to wade through more streams, and sometimes up to our waists, and when we got through our clothes would freeze on us until a great many gave up and many died, mostly old people. At last the snow got to be four and five feet deep and often we had to shovel a road before we could move. Thus our traveling was very slow and our provisions nearly gave out.

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Many of you have had the same experience I have had. And if you haven’t, you will: you will go to a hospital or to a house to comfort someone, and instead they comfort you. Or you try to encourage someone who seems to you to have so little, and yet they will express gratitude for things you take for granted.

To find gratitude and generosity when you could reasonably find hurt and resentment will surprise you. It will be so surprising because you will see so much of the opposite: people who have much more than others yet who react with anger when one advantage is lost or with resentment when an added gift is denied.

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A few months ago I had an experience that took me to the very edge of this mortal existence. As many of you know, I suffered a heart attack last August. I had the opportunity of knowing firsthand of the healing strength that comes through united prayer. For that I will always be grateful. Thank you for your prayers and for your concern. Your kindness to me lifted my spirits and aided in the healing process. I have been greatly blessed with improving health and strength.

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I desire to discuss gratitude as an expression of faith and as a saving principle. The Lord has said, “And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments” (D&C 59:21). It is clear to me from this scripture that to “thank the Lord thy God in all things” (D&C 59:7) is more than a social courtesy; it is a binding commandment.

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As a young boy, life on our small family farm was heaven. Often in our humble home there were not as many shingles as we had roof. The rest-room facility was connected by a long path that required some advance planning, and sometimes my worn shirt had more buttonholes than buttons. The Saturday night bath in front of a warm stove, where your body experienced both extremes in temperature, was a luxury.

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Often our thoughts turn to Him who atoned for our sins, who showed us the way to live and how to pray, and who demonstrated by His own actions the blessings of service. Born in a stable, cradled in a manger, this Son of God, even Jesus Christ the Lord, yet beckons to each of us to follow Him.

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Growing up in southern Utah, some of us sought employment at the many gasoline service stations that lined old Highway 91 as it made its way through downtown St. George. My younger brother, Paul, then 18, worked at Tom’s Service, a station located about three blocks from our home.

One summer day, a car with New York license plates pulled in the station and asked for a fill-up. (For you brethren under the age of 30, in those days someone actually came out and filled your car with gas, washed your windows, and checked your oil.) While Paul was washing the windshield, the driver asked him how far it was to the Grand Canyon. Paul replied that it was 170 miles.

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I’m sorry, brethren and sisters, I can’t see you, but it looks like somebody is in front of me. Even a blind man can feel that. I have in mind talking to you a few minutes about gratitude and thanksgiving. The virtues of gratitude have been widely extolled and the sinfulness of ingratitude has been just as widely condemned.

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7 Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things.

38 That ye contend no more against the Holy Ghost, but that ye receive it, and take upon you the name of Christ; that ye humble yourselves even to the dust, and worship God, in whatsoever place ye may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that ye live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you.

19 And behold also, if I, whom ye call your king, who has spent his days in your service, and yet has been in the service of God, do merit any thanks from you, O how you ought to thank your heavenly King!

20 I say unto you, my brethren, that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another—

21 I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.

22 And behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; and he has promised you that if ye would keep his commandments ye should prosper in the land; and he never doth vary from that which he hath said; therefore, if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless you and prosper you.

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 lepers, which stood afar off:

13 And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

14 And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. 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,

16 And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan.

17 And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?

18 There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.

19 And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.

3 Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

“Gratitude is a Spirit‑filled principle. It opens our minds to a universe permeated with the richness of a living God. Through it, we become spiritually aware of the wonder of the smallest things, which gladden our hearts with their messages of God’s love. This grateful awareness heightens our sensitivity to divine direction. When we communicate gratitude, we can be filled with the Spirit and connected to those around us and the Lord. Gratitude inspires happiness and carries divine influence.”

Bonnie D. Parkin, “Gratitude: A Path to Happiness,” Ensign, May 2007, 35

While journeying to Jerusalem, Jesus “passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.

“And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off:

“And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

“And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.

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“We need strong Christians who can persevere against hardship, who can sustain hope through tragedy, who can lift others by their example and their compassion, and who can consistently overcome temptations. We need strong Christians who can make important things happen by their faith and who can defend the truth of Jesus Christ against moral relativism and militant atheism.”

D. Todd Christofferson

“Consider these words written by Abraham Lincoln as part of a resolution in 1863:

“‘We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in number, wealth, and power as no other Nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God who made us.

“‘It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our . . . sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.’ (John Wesley Hill, Abraham Lincoln, Man of God, 4th ed., New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, p. 391.)”

Marion G. Romney

“I, Brigham Young, Governor of the Territory aforesaid, in response to the time-honoured custom of our fathers at Plymouth Rock, by the Governors of the several States and Territories, and with a heart filled with humiliation, and gratitude to the Fountain of all good, for His multiplied munificence to His children, have felt desirous to, and Do Proclaim Thursday, the First Day of January, Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-Two a Day of Praise and Thanksgiving for the citizens of this our peaceful Territory; in honour of the God of Abraham, who has preserved His children amid all the vicissitudes they have been called to pass; for His tender mercies in preserving the nation undivided in which we live; for causing the Gospel of His kingdom to spread and take root upon the earth, beyond the power of men and demons to destroy; and that He has promised a day of universal joy and rejoicing to all the inhabitants who shall remain when the earth shall have been purified by fire and rest in peace.”

Brigham Young

“The Prophet Joseph said at one time that one of the greatest sins of which the Latter-day Saints would be guilty is the sin of ingratitude. I presume most of us have not thought of that as a great sin. There is a great tendency for us in our prayers and in our pleadings with the Lord to ask for additional blessings. But sometimes I feel we need to devote more of our prayers to expressions of gratitude and thanksgiving for blessings already received. We enjoy so much.”

President Henry B. Eyring

“If ingratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues.”

Thomas S. Monson, Ensign, Feb 2000, 2

“…Let us have gratitude for our friends… The Lord spoke the word friend almost with a reverence. He said, ‘Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.’ True friends put up with our idiosyncrasies. They have a profound influence in our lives.”

Thomas S. Monson, Ensign, Feb 2000, 2