Chapter 33
Thanksgiving
1. Thanksgiving and gratitude are qualities of the soul too little understood and exercised. Heaven and earth listen and respond to the soul that is quickened into praise and thanksgiving. Praise is gratitude in action. Try it in your home.
2. If giving thanks has in the past increased meager supply into superabundance, the thing can be done again. Elisha did it. Jesus did it. The same power is latent in you. Why not bring it forth?
3. If you have never practiced daily thanksgiving in your home, you have left unused one of the most potent factors available to you for bringing about ideal conditions in your household.
4. The mother mind and heart is the matrix in which character is molded, and home influences do much to shape the power of a nation. Given wise and loving mothers, orderly and harmonious homes, we could eventually dispense with primitive laws and corrective outlays.
5. A grateful, loving heart at the head of the house redeems it from discord and discontent, and ultimately changes the spears and swords of a nation into plowshares and pruning hooks.
6. The day of national thanksgiving is a day originally instituted in recognition of God as the Source of the nation’s supply and prosperity, a day set apart as a special tribute of praise and gratitude to the great Giver of all good. Since the home is the bulwark of the nation, the responsibility of the proper observance of this holiday rests with those in the homes.
7. As we have reformed our method of celebrating the Fourth of July by eliminating its destructive elements, shall we not also eliminate our intemperate custom of keeping Thanksgiving with too much eating and drinking? Let us keep the spirit of thanksgiving uppermost in the home through the daily exercise of it.
8. Truth is freeing us from all the limitations by which we thought we were bound. We do not have to be sick. We do not have to endure unpleasant experiences. If we dwell in the secret place of the Most High, the guardianship of Truth is about us and the angels will bear us up so that we shall not dash our feet against a stone. If we would get into the habit of thinking truly about our food before we eat it, thinking where our food comes from, and then thinking back of that to Spirit, the great life that makes our vegetables and our fruits grow, there would come into our minds great praise when we ate. This praise would give new values to our food and make it taste better. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by the words of God.
9. Since responsibility for the proper cultivation of the appetite rests in the home, every mother should see to it that her table is provided with plain and wholesome food for the children who are forming habits of appetite that shall become permanent factors in health and soul development. It is a recognized fact that the quality of the food effects the quality of the eater. Meats stimulate the senses. Highly seasoned foods, tea, coffee, and alcoholic beverages excite the passions and appetites.
10. The mother’s prayer for the purity and protection of her family must begin at the family table, and enter into every detail of her home ministry. She must see to it that intelligence and cleanliness of thought and practice are kept inviolate through the recognition of Christ as the head of her house.
11. The mother who prepares the way of her daily ministry through prayer and thanksgiving that the dear Lord is with her, and goes before her and orders the way of her household, will always be assured of the love and confidence of her family. The very walls of her dwelling shall be in league with her thoughts of praise and thanksgiving, and “holiness unto the Lord shall be written on her pots and kettles.”
12. Since the mother gives character to the home, and the home to the nation, let every homemaker who reads this unite in making every Thanksgiving a paean of praise and a song of joy to the great Giver of our good.
