quotes tagged with 'gratitude' 
I used to think that faith…was sort of like a building block, and you put all these blocks together, and you build a house, sort of like the little pig built that the wolf could not blow down. And now I get older and I feel that faith is a matter of surrender. It’s a matter of just giving up, and leaving that house and just walking out and experiencing the cold and the rain and doubt and confusion and trying to keep up your hope and some sense of gratitude. If you just keep up hope and gratitude, maybe that’s…all you need.
On one occasion my wife expected to be away for the weekend and asked one of the sisters in our ward to teach her Relief Society lesson. The week following the session, that sister came to our home and returned the instruction manual. She also brought to my wife a freshly baked loaf of bread and a handwritten note that read, “I love you. You are a special person. Thank you for thinking of me.” She was grateful to have been asked to serve. She was full of the love of Christ.
Love for Christ. This concept proclaims Jesus as the object of our love, and our lives should be an external expression of our gratitude for him. Sometimes that is difficult to do. I once visited a high priests group meeting where an older brother taught us. He noted that “as a people we often pray, ‘We thank thee for all the blessings we enjoy.’ But what about the blessings we don’t enjoy? It can be very hard to be thankful for those.” This dear man had just experienced his first Christmas without his sweetheart in more than fifty years. It is difficult to be grateful to the Lord under circumstances we don’t enjoy.
Our beloved President Benson told some of his experiences with the Saints in war-torn countries and shared the following: “One sister walked over a thousand miles with four small children, leaving her home in Poland. She lost all four to starvation and the freezing conditions. Yet she stood before us in her emaciated condition, her clothing shredded, and her feet wrapped in burlap, and bore testimony of how blessed she was.” (Ensign, Nov. 1980, p. 33.) Things we don’t enjoy must not overshadow our reasons to maintain our love for the Savior. Otherwise we may lose our perspective or become bitter, and our love for Christ may be lost.
-Thanking Heavenly Father for the doctrines and ordinances of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, which bring hope and happiness into our lives.
-Asking for courage and boldness to open our mouths and share the gospel with our family and friends.
-Entreating Heavenly Father to help us identify individuals and families who will be receptive to our invitation to be taught by the missionaries in our homes.
-Pledging to do our part this day and this week and petitioning for help to overcome anxiety, fear, and hesitation.
-Seeking for the gift of discernment—for eyes to see and ears to hear missionary opportunities as they occur.
-Praying fervently for the strength to act as we know we should.
This same pattern of holy communication and consecrated work can be applied in our prayers for the poor and the needy, for the sick and the afflicted, for family members and friends who are struggling, and for those who are not attending Church meetings.
We can start by feeling and expressing to our Eternal Father our gratitude for being part of his eternal family, and part of his great Church family which extends to far corners of the earth, and part of a ward or branch family. The family we were born or adopted into and the future family we will establish should also be of the greatest concern to us.
Those of us who are lucky enough to belong to one of the good, if imperfect, families we talked about before, can thank God and make our best efforts to be a contributing citizen in a home where friendship and values and traditions and discipline exist, and where we can make a significant contribution if we are willing.
Those whose families are not what we wish they were can be thankful to parents who through God’s gift have given us life, and we can do everything we can do to minimize conflict and enhance harmony in our homes. Some small miracles occur where there just doesn’t appear much probability that one young person can make a difference.
Pause for a minute and ask yourself when was the last time you stood on a cold, windswept parking lot adjacent to the Strait of Magellan just to sing with, pray for, and cheer on their way those who were going to the temple, hoping your savings would allow you to go next time? One hundred ten hours, 70 of those on dusty, bumpy, unfinished roads looping out through Argentina’s wild Patagonia. What does 110 hours on a bus feel like? I honestly don’t know, but I do know that some of us get nervous if we live more than 110 miles from a temple or if the services there take more than 110 minutes. While we are teaching the principle of tithing to, praying with, and building ever more temples for just such distant Latter-day Saints, perhaps the rest of us can do more to enjoy the blessings and wonder of the temple regularly when so many temples are increasingly within our reach.
You may also recall that on June 30, 2002, during the final dedicatory service of the rebuilt Nauvoo Temple, President Gordon B. Hinckley extended a heartfelt request that those present in the temple take time upon leaving the service to walk down Parley Street. He asked that, as they did so, they think of a young pioneer family and imagine the difficulty of leaving a comfortable home and departing for an unknown destination.
I will never forget what I felt as I walked down Parley Street last summer and looked back at the temple. My heart swelled with gratitude and my eyes filled with tears as I thought about those noble pioneers. I stood near the bank of the Mississippi River for quite some time and counted my many blessings and tried to imagine what it would have been like to walk or ferry across the river into an uncertain future.
Pondering the things of the Lord—His word, His teachings, His commandments, His life, His love, the gifts He has given us, His Atonement for us—brings about a tremendous feeling of gratitude for our Savior and for the life and blessings He has given us.
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