Returning Thanks

SAT., NOV. 1, 1986, 6:41 AM
FARM, STUDY

Yes, o son, I was quite aware of your failure to offer thanks for your noon meal yesterday. It was the first meal with a young colleague, and you normally would have shown forth your relationship to Me in this small way. The opportunity was quite evident. You just missed it. You regret this, and so do I. So you shall hear, this morning, perhaps more than you want to know about returning thanks.

A bowed head and a short prayer are symbols of an acknowledged relationship. The acknowledgment is that ALL things originate in Me. I am the provider. I am the sustainer. Despite the obvious fact that most of the foods you eat come from a store, and you have them to eat by paying for them with money that you have received for your work at the university… you know that finally you must admit that the food is a gift from Me. It is not magic manna, from heaven, but the result of My creation, in general, and My manipulation of it for your benefit. You can rarely know when this latter has taken place. But you can thank as if it were so.

As I have told you many times before the thanking is not for My benefit. I am not a God Who needs continual thanking to sustain My ego. I know you are thankful, even when you don’t bow and pray. No, the benefit is to you, and I don’t want you to miss it. It is important that you continue to rise above the perception that the earth plane gives and that your culture reinforces… that this is a purely natural world and that you work for and earn the necessities and luxuries of life… that I, your Triune God, have no active role in the minute affairs of life.

I would rather have you acknowledge all things, conditions, and events as coming from Me. This is true, in a mystical and ultimate spiritual sense, and prayers of thanks are your acceptance of this, even as it doesn’t seem actually true. The sore throat you had yesterday came from Me, as did the warm day, the strength of your arms, the painful back and shoulder… as well as the slight stiffness of the back today.

The beautiful leaves, so much more vivid as they are in the dying process than when they were fully alive, are symbols of My seasonal gifts. They come, small and pale, in the spring, become full and green in the summer, and die and fall, in splendor, in the autumn. Winter is the season of bareness, and there certainly are times when I withhold from you, for spiritual reasons and for seasonal, as well. If you rake and mulch the leaves you can compound My gift and blessing. And I certainly have no objection to such usage.

As two or more people sit down before some food, and one bows and prays, the others have an opportunity to join their hearts in this thanks. (They can refuse, of course, or join in only partially.) This simple act of joining in a prayer of thanks can be the revelation of a relationship that would not be known otherwise. So I applaud your general practice of asking others to pray, rather than always being the one who prays. It is as important to join another in prayer as to ask her or him to join with you.