Gratitude to God Shown Through Kindness
THE most effectual way to manifest gratitude to God is to help some of the great benevolent causes or institutions, or to relieve the suffering of some of his needy children. The prayers of the priest and the Levite weighed not one-thousandth as much on the scale of God’s estimate of gratitude as did the act of the good Samaritan. Long prayers, eloquent sermons, and loud speeches on thanksgiving day must be supplemented with real acts of kindness and relief-giving to his suffering children, if they are to count for anything in our Heavenly Father’s book of reckoning. A kind word spoken, a show of sympathy with the bereaved, a visit paid to some one afflicted in body, the directing of the thought of one far from God to the sinfulness of sin and the goodness and mercy of God,—these are the thank-offerings which are in the sight of God “of great price.”—Religious Telescope.