Dr. J. Kennedy Shultz is founder and pastor of the Atlanta Church of Religious Science. He is well known as a teacher and lecturer in the field of New Thought, with his lectures and seminars widely distributed on audiocassettes throughout the United States and abroad. Dr. Shultz holds a master’s degree in counseling from New York University, and Religious Science International awarded him recognition as Doctor of Religious Science in 1987 when he was first elected president of that organization. He is the author of A LEGACY OF TRUTH and YOU ARE THE POWER.
The great German philosopher Goethe, toward the end of his long life, said that there would be very little left of him if he were to discard all that he owed to others. As I get older, and hopefully wiser, I am certain that this is absolutely true for me, also. Everything substantial about me is made out of the good that people have given me along the way, which I have had the good sense to accept; and the harm people have done me along the way, which I have had the grace to forgive. I learned much from every bit of it once I became grateful for the power in me that lets me own the experience beyond the event.
This means that we need to be grateful that we have received some enduring good from the wonderful things people have given us or done for us and from whatever harm done unto us that we have survived. You don’t survive real harm without a growth in wisdom. And sometimes, it seems, we require that our wisdom comes to us the hard way through survival of the worst.
It is not possible to take our wisdom back in time and do it all over again the right way. It is only possible to take wisdom, however it comes, and go forward with it, doing things better than we did before. But no good thing belongs to us until we own it. And we do not own anything that we do not accept with gratitude. In other words, it’s not yours until you say thank you. Thank who? Thank God! It is not always easy to thank people for what we have gotten out of our relationship with them. But it is always possible to thank God that we have come out of it with something of value. And once you get used to thanking God for all life on a regular basis, it becomes clear who else you ought to be thanking, and it becomes easy to do so.
When we subscribe to the old admonition to “in all things give thanks,” we are not agreeing to give thanks for all things. It is not sensible to be thankful for bad things, harmful things. Rather than be carried mindlessly away with the good things or driven into the ground by the bad things, take the time in the midst of all things to be grateful to God that you are greater than both the best of them and the worst of them, and that you will find a way to come out of any of them, somehow enhanced by the experience.
An attitude of gratitude in the midst of all things will allow us to make all things new. It will allow us to make something better out of both the best and the worst that comes our way, because an attitude of gratitude puts us in right relationship with God, the creative power of our lives. And our creative power flows forth best into our minds and hearts when we are open to it. So don’t clog up the Divine wavelengths of your consciousness by fears that the good that is coming your way won’t last forever, or that the bad you are experiencing will. Just take the time in the midst of it all to be thankful that there is an eternally durable wisdom at work within you that knows how to use it all to your ultimate advantage. If you do this, you make yourself a person who moves through life retaining the best and discarding the rest as a matter of course. This takes the struggle out of daily living in this funny old world of ours and sets us free to live more easily. The more easily we forgive, the more easily we live. And the more naturally grateful we become for what life really is, the freer we become of the kind of nonsense that used to trip us up and demean our existence.
I am quite taken by this quotation from the great Meister Eckhart: “Be always ready for the gifts of God, and always for new ones—and always remember, God is a thousand times more ready to give than you are to receive.”
The stuff that blocks our readiness to receive is all the stuff that clogs up our consciousness when we do not know how to respond to life with gratitude for our God-given power to make the best out of both the good and the bad. A sincere and inspired religious effort to develop a relationship of perpetual thanksgiving with God will clear out that fearful stuff and “make ready the way of the Lord.” This is the mind that in all things remembers to give thanks.
