IT'S USUALLY PRETTY EASY to be grateful after the fact—the mountain has been climbed, danger averted, crisis overcome, health renewed. But Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, brought the world a new view of gratitude in her writings. For her, gratitude was a force that would strengthen and preserve one before the fact—while one is still clinging by a single handhold to the mountain, before the danger or crisis had been overcome, while health still seemed precarious. And, she brought out, gratitude transforms because it affirms the presence of omnipotent, unstoppable Love.
A quick look at Mary Baker Eddy's life would reveal a lot she could have been ungrateful for—widowhood, poverty, homelessness, divorce, ill health. Yet her spiritual journey through these experiences developed in her an ability to be grateful before relief or victory. Long before she had the security of being a best-selling author and a recognized religious authority, her life had shown her that "... His love is infinite and enters into all the minutia of being." The Mary Baker Eddy Collection, quoted in Moments of Gratitude (Boston: The Writings of Mary Baker Eddy, 2003), p. 24 .
Moments of Gratitude, a new book published by The Writings of Mary Baker Eddy, captures a broad cross section of Mrs. Eddy's writings on the subject. The selections come from her well-known book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and her other writings, as well as from The Mary Baker Eddy Collection.
