In this season of Thanksgiving and gratitude here in North America, I’ve been thinking about this: We don’t have to wait until we’ve been freed or healed to be grateful. Giving thanks to God in advance lifts us out of the belief that we’re mortal, limited, in pain, or sad.
Active, prior-to-proof gratitude can help open our lives to the present evidence of God’s lovingkindness. It helps us embrace the unchanging truth about ourselves as His spiritual ideas—blessed, whole, and perfect.
God is the central light of genuine, perfect being—the actual source of life; the loving creator who cares for and delights in His spiritual universe, and causes it to shine. God’s love coming to human consciousness is the warmth and inspiration that lights up the dark corners of human experience and melts the cold, hard resistance to truth that mortal sense would impose on us.