Richard L. Evans
The Spoken Word
24 November 1957

A LIVING, MOVING KIND OF GRATITUDE

Great among the great qualities of character is the great gift of gratitude. Gratitude makes all service, however one-sided, seem satisfying.

It is sobering, or should be, to each and all of us to consider how much of the hours and effort of others has gone into the making of all of us: the time others have taken to feed us, to teach us, to care for us in illness, to nurture us in health; to provide the clothing we wear; to preserve the freedom we have; to make the music we hear, the books we read, the tools and all the tangibles that are ours; the very houses and buildings in which we live our lives. All this, and so much else unmentioned, others have done for us, others from the far past even down unto the nearest present.

We are the inheritors of so much more than we can calculate. And one measure of our gratitude would be our willingness to work, to serve, to pass on to others such things as we ourselves have received.

Of course, children cannot serve parents in precisely the same way that parents have served children. They cannot nurture them in infancy. They cannot teach them through the years of youth. But children can do much for parents, in living honorable lives, and in cherishing and caring for them and making them feel wanted and appreciated in the later years of life.

And what they cannot pay directly to parents, they can pay in part to another generation, to their own children and others, to give them stable homes and warm hearts and a sense of being wanted. The patient cannot in turn administer medicine to the doctor; nor the student turn around and teach the teacher; nor we ourselves do for the Lord God what he has done for us. But we can do our best to show our gratitude by keeping his commandments, and doing unto others what we ourselves can do.

Gratitude must be a living, moving, doing kind of gratitude, much more than a passing and perfunctory expression of appreciation. In every community and country, in every organization and institution, there is work to be done, with long hours of effort. In every household there is the daily doing of drudgery, of many tedious routine tasks. And often lightly we go our way, leaving someone else to do what needs to be done.

And whenever we dodge a duty or run from responsibility or deliberately avoid doing our share of the tedious or inconvenient tasks, we would well recall these two questions suggested by an eminent public servant who recently left this life: “If not by me, whom”? “If not now, when?” As to all the things that need doing, which someone has to do: “If not by me, whom?” “If not now, when?” And our willingness to pass on payment in part for what we have received from the past, will be the best evidence we can give that we earnestly have in our hearts the great gift of gratitude.