INGRATITUDE | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 29, 1869

INGRATITUDE.

It is a very sharp trial to have to do for ungrateful people. The more you do, the more you may. They never think that what is done is of any value. Something much better ought to be done for them. They are not appreciated. Their mouths are full of complaints, and their hearts of dissatisfaction. Sometimes it falls to our lot to do for such persons.

There is one excellent result to follow from this. Nothing can so perfectly instruct us in the lessons of ingratitude as to have it manifested by those we try to help. We may see how wicked is such a spirit in ourselves. We are disgusted by this spirit in others when we try to help them. But how often do we exhibit the same spirit? Perhaps we do not allow this to manifest itself in respect to our fellow men. But how often is this the case in our feelings toward God. And how much worse is ingratitude toward him than toward our fellow-men.

When we murmur that things do not go to our minds, it is because that we are not grateful to God for his infinite mercies to us. Like ungrateful people that we try to help, we lose sight of all that is done for us in thinking of something that we still lack or that we want to have granted us.

It is a base and wicked thing to repay favors with ingratitude; yet we cannot absolutely desist from giving even in such cases. When we reach that point that we never act thus toward the Lord it will do perhaps to think of letting ungrateful people look out wholly for themselves.

Till then we need the lesson of the baseness of ingratitude to teach us to shun this Heaven-provoking sin. But our duty toward such is one of a very limited character. Relieve their present distress; but as they cannot be satisfied with what you do for them, give them the privilege of finding somebody else, created on purpose to wait on them.