How graphically the Way-shower of Christianity portrayed gratitude as preceding, and even essential to, healing! At the tomb of Lazarus he said : "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always" !John 11:41, 42
Jesus had full faith in his prayer. It was supported by the clear realization that God, Spirit, is all-powerful and ever present, and that His creation, including man, is spiritual and indestructible. However, the Master must have been acutely aware that those who stood around him had no knowledge of the power of Truth as operative through spiritual law. Therefore, to establish a practical Christianity for his own and all future generations, and to emphasize gratitude as an impelling restorative agency, Jesus explained, "Because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me." He then bade Lazarus come forth, and Lazarus appeared, raised from the tomb in which his friends had buried him.
Gratitude, such as the Master showed here, constituted an acknowledgment of deathless, unchanging divine Principle. As understood in Christian Science, gratitude includes knowledge of the omnipotence of God, a radical reliance on Him, which necessarily brings one under the healing law of divine Mind. Earnest students of this Science recognize that gratitude is an expression of confidence in the one Mind, which governs all in unbroken harmony.
