The outstanding attitude of a Christian is one of thanksgiving. Everything is a gift from God, except our sins. Even the effects of our sins are a gift from God, as are the effects of other people’s sins, even when they hurt us. For those who love God, all things cooperate for good. It is easy to say with the Holy Scriptures that we should thank God at all times and for everything. It is not very difficult to believe that we ought to do so. But it is more difficult to actually succeed in giving thanks to God for all things and always living in an attitude of gratitude. We cannot be thanking God for something or someone if we are complaining about it or him. We can hardly thank God for His gift to us of someone we have to live with, or someone talking to us at any particular moment, or someone affecting us one way or another, if we deliberately dislike that person or try to avoid contact with him or complain about him to ourselves or others. If we do that, we are not acting as a gift from God to that person, nor are we accepting him as a gift from God to us. Sometimes God does give someone extremely awkward to us as His gift, someone who is a great cross to us, but when have crosses coming from God been anything by a great blessing to a Christian?
You cannot love your neighbor if you are not ready to thank God for him. He is God’s gift to you, and if you reject that gift, you reject God to a greater or lesser extent. If someone gives you a birthday present that you do not appreciate or want, you can always say thank you to the donor and not let him know that you are going to give his gift to someone else at the first possible opportunity . . . but God cannot be deceived by politeness. He sees whether you are really thanking Him in your heart for what He gives you, and since all things are in His hands, He never gives you anything harmful or unsuitable, even when He gives you a share in the Cross. Thanking God at all times for all things and for all people is a great achievement, and it becomes much easier if you really make yourself believe more and more that everything is a gift from God. In this way you begin to see God in all things and to get closer to Him through all His gifts.
. . . [Now] there is one most basic and fundamental gift that God has given you. . .
It is a gift you must take care of and cultivate and look after as long as you live. . . [It] is so valuable that if He had not given it to you, although He is omnipotent, He could not have given you anything else at all. You must accept this gift with thanks, with joy, with open arms. . . YOU ARE GOD’S GIFT TO YOURSELF.
. . . You cannot be a God-given blessing to others until you are a God-given blessing to yourself. Charity begins at home, and becoming holy yourself is prior to any other duty you have. Each of us has to save his own soul, and no one else can do it for us. . . What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and converts the whole world, and saves the whole world, if he loses his own soul?
. . . Having said that God created you as a gift to yourself and to others, I have not really stated the real purpose God had in making you . . . The only real reason for all these things is that God wanted someone great enough, good enough, large enough, enlightened enough, filled with love enough for Him to give Himself to . . . God is love, and love is gift, and God created you so that you could receive Him. When you receive Him, you do not become absorbed into a vague life where you lose your own identity. In giving Himself to you, God makes you more and more yourself, your true self, the one you are to say “Thank God” for.
Living your life for God, keeping up your prayers, being fervent and faithful to your days of recollection, denying yourself, taking up your cross daily and following Jesus on the hard road to heaven do not take away your splendid identity but build it up; and the more you are your true self and glad to be your true self the better.
. . . God has given you yourself as a pearl of great price to keep safe and develop for Him. Do not damage it; do not treat it lightly; do not deny its almost infinite value. God loves you, and you cannot love Him if you don not love what He loves.
