Mrs. Eddy thus describes the transforming power of gratitude: "What is gratitude but a powerful camera obscura, a thing focusing light where love, memory, and all within the human heart is present to manifest light." The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 164;
In a world darkened by the shadows of war, crime, and poverty, a ray of gratitude in a receptive heart can not only illumine and help transform that life but can also brighten the pathway for others. When one is grateful, his thought is focused on good, God. He recognizes the good in his experience as well as in that of others. But one may ask how it is possible in the midst of today's seeming obscuration of good to find reason for gratitude. It is possible if we look through the lens of Christian Science. From the understanding gained in the study and application of this Science, thought is focused on the reality of being — God's perfect creation, including spiritual man. To glimpse this verity of being fills the heart with gratitude; to know it uncovers the unreality of matter and opens the vision to the spiritual realm of the real, where Spirit, God, is supreme.
This realm of divine Love is under the government of God, or Principle. Here Life is eternal, Truth omnipotent, and Soul ever present. Man, created in God's image, dwells therein. And the light of omnipresent Love illumines it with spiritual radiance. When we are fully aware of the allness of divine Love, any suggestion of another power is destroyed. A student of Mrs. Eddy's writes of what Mrs. Eddy once said regarding her healing work. The words, as she remembered them, included the following: "I saw the love of God encircling the universe and man, rilling all space, and that divine Love so permeated my own consciousness that I loved with Christlike compassion everything I saw." We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, First Series, p. 74;
