“Chapter 22: The Marvelous Virtue of Gratitude,” Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Thomas S. Monson (2020)
“Chapter 22,” Teachings: Thomas S. Monson
Chapter 22
The Marvelous Virtue of Gratitude
“To express gratitude is gracious and honorable, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live with gratitude ever in our hearts is to touch heaven.”
From the Life of Thomas S. Monson
When President Monson was about 10 years old, he began to develop an interest in birds, particularly pigeons. From the school windows, he and his friends often watched pigeons sitting in rows on the nearby roofs. After school the boys would sometimes catch pigeons, and Tom and his friend Bob built simple coops for them in their backyards.
Soon Bob’s father installed a window in Bob’s pigeon coop to keep the wind from bothering the birds. Tom began to long for such a window in his own coop.
One day Bob’s father surprised Tom by coming to the Monson home with a window and installing it in his coop. Recalling his feelings at the time, President Monson later said, “I had never before experienced such a sense of gratitude for something which another person had, on his own, done for me.”1
For most of his life, President Monson raised pigeons in his backyard. He expanded his brood to include many varieties, some of which won prizes at county and state fairs.2 Through all his experiences with this lifelong hobby, he never forgot his feeling of gratitude for the simple act of kindness from Bob’s father.
Having learned of the power of gratitude from this and other experiences, President Monson made it a prominent theme in his teachings. “My sincere, heartfelt prayer is that we may in our individual lives reflect that marvelous virtue of gratitude,” he said. “May it permeate our very souls, now and evermore.”3
Throughout his life, President Monson felt gratitude for a friend’s father who installed a window on his pigeon coop when he was a young boy.
Teachings of Thomas S. Monson
1
Expressing gratitude is a pattern for personal happiness.
Gratitude is a divine principle. The Lord declared through a revelation given to the Prophet Joseph Smith:
“Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things. …
“And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things” [Doctrine and Covenants 59:7, 21].
In the Book of Mormon we are told to “live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which [God] doth bestow upon you” [Alma 34:38].4
Gracias, danke, merci—whatever language is spoken, “thank you” frequently expressed will cheer your spirit, broaden your friendships, and lift your lives to a higher pathway. … There is a simplicity—even a sincerity—when “thank you” is spoken.
The beauty and eloquence of an expression of gratitude is reflected in a newspaper story of some years ago:
“The District of Columbia police auctioned off about 100 unclaimed bicycles Friday. ‘One dollar,’ said an 11-year-old boy as the bidding opened on the first bike. The bidding, however, went much higher. ‘One dollar,’ the boy repeated hopefully each time another bike came up.
“The auctioneer, who had been auctioning stolen or lost bikes for 43 years, noticed that the boy’s hopes seemed to soar higher whenever a racer-type bicycle was put up.
“Then there was just one racer left. The bidding went to eight dollars. ‘Sold to that boy over there for nine dollars!’ said the auctioneer. He took eight dollars from his own pocket and asked the boy for his dollar. The youngster turned it over in pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters—took his bike, and started to leave. But he went only a few feet. Carefully parking his new possession, he went back, gratefully threw his arms around the auctioneer’s neck, and cried.”
When was the last time we felt gratitude as deeply as did this boy? The deeds others perform in our behalf might not be as poignant, but certainly there are kind acts that warrant our expressions of gratitude.5
Think to thank. In these three words you have the finest capsule course for a happy marriage, a formula for enduring friendships, and a pattern for personal happiness.6
A grateful heart … comes through expressing gratitude to our Heavenly Father for His blessings and to those around us for all that they bring into our lives. This requires conscious effort—at least until we have truly learned and cultivated an attitude of gratitude. Often we feel grateful and intend to express our thanks but forget to do so or just don’t get around to it. Someone has said that “feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it” [William Arthur Ward, in Allen Klein, comp., Change Your Life! (2010), 15].7
Do we remember to give thanks for the blessings we receive? Sincerely giving thanks not only helps us recognize our blessings, but it also unlocks the doors of heaven and helps us feel God’s love.8
From the 30th Psalm, David pledges, “O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever” [Psalm 30:12].
The Apostle Paul, in his epistle to the Corinthians, proclaimed, “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift” [2 Corinthians 9:15]. And to the Thessalonians, “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God” [1 Thessalonians 5:18].
My brothers and sisters, do we give thanks to God “for his unspeakable gift” and His rich blessings so abundantly bestowed upon us?
Do we pause and ponder Ammon’s words? “Now my brethren, we see that God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; yea, he numbereth his people, … over all the earth. Now this is my joy, and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever” [Alma 26:37]. …
The prophet Alma urged, “Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day” [Alma 37:37].9
2
Focusing on our blessings helps us face challenges and problems.
Regardless of our circumstances, each of us has much for which to be grateful if we will but pause and contemplate our blessings.
This is a wonderful time to be on earth. While there is much that is wrong in the world today, there are many things that are right and good. There are marriages that make it, parents who love their children and sacrifice for them, friends who care about us and help us, teachers who teach. Our lives are blessed in countless ways. …
When we encounter challenges and problems in our lives, it is often difficult for us to focus on our blessings. However, if we reach deep enough and look hard enough, we will be able to feel and recognize just how much we have been given.
I share with you an account of one family which was able to find blessings in the midst of serious challenges. This is an account I read many years ago and have kept because of the message it conveys. It was written by Gordon Green. …
Gordon tells how he grew up on a farm in Canada, where he and his siblings had to hurry home from school while the other children played ball and went swimming. Their father, however, had the capacity to help them understand that their work amounted to something. This was especially true after harvesttime when the family celebrated Thanksgiving, for on that day their father gave them a great gift. He took an inventory of everything they had.
On Thanksgiving morning he would take them to the cellar with its barrels of apples, bins of beets, carrots packed in sand, and mountains of sacked potatoes as well as peas, corn, string beans, jellies, strawberries, and other preserves which filled their shelves. He had the children count everything carefully. Then they went out to the barn and figured how many tons of hay there were and how many bushels of grain in the granary. They counted the cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and geese. Their father said he wanted to see how they stood, but they knew he really wanted them to realize on that feast day how richly God had blessed them and had smiled upon all their hours of work. Finally, when they sat down to the feast their mother had prepared, the blessings were something they felt.
Gordon indicated, however, that the Thanksgiving he remembered most thankfully was the year they seemed to have nothing for which to be grateful.
The year started off well: they had leftover hay, lots of seed, four litters of pigs, and their father had a little money set aside so that someday he could afford to buy a hay loader—a wonderful machine most farmers just dreamed of owning. It was also the year that electricity came to their town. … They acquired a washing machine that worked all day by itself and brilliant lightbulbs that dangled from each ceiling. There were no more lamps to fill with oil, no more wicks to cut, no more sooty chimneys to wash. The lamps went quietly off to the attic.
The coming of electricity to their farm was almost the last good thing that happened to them that year. Just as their crops were starting to come through the ground, the rains started. When the water finally receded, there wasn’t a plant left anywhere. They planted again, but more rains beat the crops into the earth. Their potatoes rotted in the mud. They sold a couple of cows and all the pigs and other livestock they had intended to keep, getting very low prices for them because everybody else had to do the same thing. All they harvested that year was a patch of turnips which had somehow weathered the storms.
Then it was Thanksgiving again. Their mother said, “Maybe we’d better forget it this year. We haven’t even got a goose left.”
On Thanksgiving morning, however, Gordon’s father showed up with a jackrabbit and asked his wife to cook it. Grudgingly she started the job, indicating it would take a long time to cook that tough old thing. When it was finally on the table with some of the turnips that had survived, the children refused to eat. Gordon’s mother cried, and then his father did a strange thing. He went up to the attic, got an oil lamp, took it back to the table, and lighted it. He told the children to turn out the electric lights. When there was only the lamp again, they could hardly believe that it had been that dark before. They wondered how they had ever seen anything without the bright lights made possible by electricity.
The food was blessed, and everyone ate. When dinner was over, they all sat quietly. Wrote Gordon:
“In the humble dimness of the old lamp we were beginning to see clearly again. … It [was] a lovely meal. The jack rabbit tasted like turkey and the turnips were the mildest we could recall. … [Our] home … , for all its want, was so rich [to] us” [adapted from H. Gordon Green, “The Thanksgiving I Don’t Forget,” Reader’s Digest, Nov. 1956, 69–71].
My brothers and sisters, to express gratitude is gracious and honorable, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live with gratitude ever in our hearts is to touch heaven.10
“Each of us has much for which to be grateful if we will but pause and contemplate our blessings.”
3
We can cultivate an attitude of gratitude.
We can lift ourselves and others as well when we refuse to remain in the realm of negative thought and cultivate within our hearts an attitude of gratitude. If ingratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues. Someone has said that “gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others” [Cicero, in A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles, sel. H. L. Mencken (1942), 491].
How can we cultivate within our hearts an attitude of gratitude? President Joseph F. Smith, sixth President of the Church, provided an answer. Said he: “The grateful man sees so much in the world to be thankful for, and with him the good outweighs the evil. Love overpowers jealousy, and light drives darkness out of his life.” He continued: “Pride destroys our gratitude and sets up selfishness in its place. How much happier we are in the presence of a grateful and loving soul, and how careful we should be to cultivate, through the medium of a prayerful life, a thankful attitude toward God and man!” [Gospel Doctrine, 5th ed. (1939), 263].
President Smith is telling us that a prayerful life is the key to possessing gratitude.
Do material possessions make us happy and grateful? Perhaps momentarily. However, those things which provide deep and lasting happiness and gratitude are the things which money cannot buy: our families, the gospel, good friends, our health, our abilities, the love we receive from those around us. Unfortunately, these are some of the things we allow ourselves to take for granted.11
We have no way of knowing when our privilege to extend a helping hand will unfold before us. The road to Jericho each of us travels bears no name, and the weary traveler who needs our help may be one unknown. Altogether too frequently, the recipient of kindness shown fails to express his feelings, and we are deprived of a glimpse of greatness and a touch of tenderness that motivates us to go and do likewise. Genuine gratitude was expressed by the writer of a letter received recently at Church headquarters … :
“To the Office of the First Presidency:
“Salt Lake City showed me Christian hospitality once during my wandering years.
“On a cross-country journey by bus to California, I stepped down in the terminal in Salt Lake City, sick and trembling from aggravated loss of sleep caused by a lack of necessary medication. In my headlong flight from a bad situation in Boston, I had completely forgotten my supply.
“In the Temple Square Hotel restaurant, I sat dejectedly, cheekbones propped on fists, staring at a cup of coffee I really didn’t want. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a couple approach my table. ‘Are you all right, young man?’ the woman asked. I raised up, crying and a bit shaken, [and] related my story and the predicament I was in then. They listened carefully and patiently to my nearly incoherent ramblings, and then they took charge. They must have been prominent citizens. They spoke with the restaurant manager, then told me I could have all I wanted to eat there for five days. They took me next door to the hotel desk and got me a room for five days. Then they drove me to a clinic and saw that I was provided with the medications I needed—truly my basic lifeline to sanity and comfort.
“While I was recuperating and building my strength, I made it a point to attend the daily Tabernacle organ recitals. The celestial voicing of that instrument from the faintest intonation to the mighty full organ is the most sublime sonority of my acquaintance. I have acquired albums and tapes of the Tabernacle organ and the choir which I can rely upon any time to soothe and buttress a sagging spirit.
“On my last day at the hotel, before I resumed my journey, I turned in my key; and there was a message for me from that couple: ‘Repay us by showing gentle kindness to some other troubled soul along your road.’ That was my habit, but I determined to be more keenly on the lookout for someone who needed a lift in life.
“I wish you well. I don’t know if these are indeed the ‘latter days’ spoken of in the scriptures, but I do know two members of your church were saints to me in my desperate hours of need. I just thought you might like to know.”12
“The road to Jericho each of us travels bears no name, and the weary traveler who needs our help may be one unknown.”
4
We show gratitude to our Savior as we follow His example and obey His words.
In addition to all else for which we are grateful, we may ever reflect our gratitude for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. His glorious gospel provides answers to life’s greatest questions: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where do our spirits go when we die? That gospel brings to those who live in darkness the light of divine truth.
He taught us how to pray. He taught us how to live. He taught us how to die. His life is a legacy of love. The sick He healed; the downtrodden He lifted; the sinner He saved. …
Let us follow Him. Let us emulate His example. Let us obey His words. By so doing, we give to Him the divine gift of gratitude.13
Suggestions for Study and Teaching
Questions
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Review the scriptures that President Monson quoted about the importance of gratitude (see section 1). Why do you think that being thankful is “a pattern for personal happiness”? How has giving thanks helped you feel God’s love? What are some ways we can express gratitude to others?
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Why do we sometimes take our blessings for granted? (See section 2.) How has contemplating your blessings helped you in a time of difficulty? What are some blessings you have not recognized until you made the effort to see them? What can we learn about gratitude from the story of Gordon Green?
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How can we cultivate an attitude of gratitude? (See section 3.) How has prayer helped you develop deeper gratitude? How does service to others show our gratitude to God? How are our lives affected when we live with gratitude?
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President Monson counseled us to “reflect our gratitude for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” (section 4). How can we deepen our gratitude for the Savior? How can we show our gratitude to Him?
Related Scriptures
Psalm 100:3–4; Luke 17:11–19; Colossians 2:6–7; 2 Nephi 9:50–52; Mosiah 2:19–22; Doctrine and Covenants 78:18–19
Study Help
“Plan study activities that will build your faith in the Savior” (Preach My Gospel [2004], 22). For instance, as you study, you might ask yourself questions such as the following: How might these teachings help me increase my understanding of the Atonement of Jesus Christ? How can these teachings help me become more like the Savior?