ERIC BUTTERWORTH PAPERS (3014)
BOX 26 FOLDER 31
THE PROSPERING POWER OF THANKSGIVING
NOVEMBER 22,1992
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THE PROSPERING POWEROF THANKSGIVING
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Psalm 100: Make a joyful noise unto the Lord; servethe Lord withgladness; come into His presence with singing. Give thanks to him, bless his name.
For the Lord is good, His steadfastness endureth forever, and his faithfulness to all generations."
Psalm 100 will be read and preached about and sung un churches across this great land all thius week and on Thansgiving Day. But I wonder how often the individual participating in the Thanksgivingservice will reflect the attitude of gratitude, or if the congregant may be engaging in what Gilbert and Sullivan call..."Platitudes in stained-glass attitudes."
Many persons think of Thansgiving as a season to count our many blessings, count them o’er and oe’r." And there will som,etimes be a time when things are at a low ebb, and you can’t in all honesty find much to give thanks for. Thanksgiving is a madtter of attitudes, not platitudes. And if we do not have an attitude of gratitude, you will be searching out there for blessings to give thanks for...but they may mistakenly st art with the perspective of inadequqtc and insufficiency...thus they simply become more conscious of limitations. The end effect is...instead of counting their blessings, they count their enview: "He is so talented" "She has so many lovely things" or, "I wish we had a nice home like they have.
As a result of thos process, they develop, paradoxically, "an ungrateful heart."
To pray for prosperity out of a sense of complaint or discouragement is to effectively compound the proble. You may be praying fir improved financial conditions, but if you are feeling poor, your feeling is the consciousness you will be projecting. As Jesus once said to His disciples, "Y pray but ye pray amiss."
We want to consider somethoughts this morning onthe prosperint power of Thanksgiving." You may have to unblearn some things (which i involved in alllearning..) The preacher may roll out all the theological chestnuts, in preaching on Thskgiving Day, and we turn to the computer of our subconscious mind, and roll out the memory of special prayers and liturgies.
I often recall the story of the littlegirl who was "stayong over" at her Auntie's house. Her auntie listened while the little girl said her prayers. Quite impressed with the little one’s maturity...andshe commentd onhow nicely she prayed. Thelittle girl said, "But Auntie, you should hear me gargle." Her prayer was merely an accomplishment of memory and imitation.
Thanksgiving is not a day on which youdo certqin things, like counting your blessings". It is a certain way you deal with all things every day.
And as it is with eveything we deal with in Truth, it boils down to attitudes.
But Thangivingis not playing games. It is much more than a day of piously singing our praise God, Oh how I love God! etc. God isn’t onebit moved by your flattery. I say (tothe shock of some persons) thjat it makes no difference to God whetdher you thank him or not. But it makes a lot of difference to you. Certainly we need to make a grateful heart a perpetual conciousness, but we need to get the vision of Godas a ceseless flow of substance and ceativity, calling only forusto "give way", which is what Thanksgiving is about.
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The despondent persons crdiews out, BUt what do I have to give thanks for?"
This is to miss thewholeidea of Thanksgiving. You don't need to have something to give thanks for. Thanksgiving is not just a reactionary emotion. It simply flows forthfrom within and becomes a causative energy.
We tend to view thanksgiving in terms of obligation, and we ae obligated to show soime kind of appreciation. Traditionall religionists tell us tdhat we owe it to God to give him dthanks for all our blessings. But how do you tdhank God? Often without thinking, we are subtly drawn into a dualism with Mighty God up there. Truly God is the UNiversal source that is present in every point in all its fulness. But God is too Almighty and too omnipresent to be upset ifyou do not express gratitude. We know how a peson reacts if you are not grateful for what he may have done for you. He nmay saym "Such an ingrate?" But will God call you an ingrate if you do not give thanks?
I like the wit and wisdom of Meister Eckhart who aays, "I never give thabnks to God for loving me...He can't help himself." You seee gratitude is not for God. You are not obligated dtothank God for your life, for your job, for yourprosperity. But giving thanks is an important state of your awareness which tends to keep you centered inthe divine flow within.
So you tdhank God by thinking good, by "Letting God be God in you, by letting the divine idea which you are in God mind, "Be done on earth as itis in Heaven."
It may be anundeniable fact that you have enployment and financial problems.
And it may see hard to whip up much enthusiasm forthe holiday. Perhaps you cannothonestly give thanks for your experiences. But the metaphysical thiught is to give thanks from dthe reality of your eternal relationship with the prodigal Universe.
It is a cosmicinsight taught by the mystical teachers of all time. Plato (2500 years ago) taught:	A grateful mind is a great mind which eventually
attracts to itself great things."
You may enviously say of a more fortunate person, "She has good reason for gratitude fior she has so much." But the grateful person is great becaus she has turned on all dthe lights within her. By Plato's law it might be that she has so much because sheis so grateful. The grateful heart actually opens the way to the flow and becomes an attractive force to draw to itself great things.
A missionary to Afraica spent a life-time working with a particular tribe that was mysteriously poverty-stricken, even though other tribes in the region were realteively prosperous. He spent years researching this phenomena.
He studies all asspects o their culture. And he came up with one possible answer to the dilemna. In their tribal language, there was no word to exxxpress gratitude. BY some quirk of evolution, they had forgotten how to say "thank you." Could it be that our own fincial problems be the result of the loss, even temporarily, of a grateful heart. This missionary all but concludes that we grow rich by Thanksgiving, and we grow impoverished when we lose tdhe spirit of gratitude.
George Bernard Shaw says, "God has given us aworld tha t nothing but our own folly keeps from being a paradise." Inothe words welive in a world where there is always a potential for affluence. All the substance of the Universe, and all the wealth that hss ever manifested itself or ever will manifest idtself in this world, is present right now, and right where you are. Only our lackof perception, lack of a grateful heart,, keeps us from experiencing it.
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The old ri'iigion sang, "Count your many blq-ssins. . <,") But what if tdhe "blessings are completely inadequate? If you have^patits with patches on them, theold concept would be tp'^thank God for thepant;s ^ patdchps and all. This was the teaching of the dtheology of the! "gtade,£f poverty j^’ It was explained, "I am grateful for my little nov^ for I tyill have abindance by and by." But ^realistically this may well be centring the ateention on limidatiin as being your lot inJLTfe.'""
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WhenJesus was faced with a thronbg of 5,000 hungry people, the disciples reported that they "only" hd one boy’s lunch oif five loaves and two fish, which of course was inadequate. You may think that he thanked Goid for this meager supply.Actually the account says, "He lifted up his eyes and gave thanks..." In other words helooked away from the evidence of lack to the realiation of the Allness of God He gave thanks not for the boy’s lunch, but from the realization of the limitless supply ibn God. He centered himself in the limitless creative flow.
You know the rest. Th e disciples were toldto distribute the good, and there was plenty and to spare. It is not a matter of rejecting the present supply, butit is seeing the supply as a symbol of abundance rather than an evidence of lack. For instance, if you need moneyu, pehaps you have a dollar bill - even if it is your lastone - turn your thought away from the "only a dollar" consciousness, to the realization that the dollar is substance in currency.
Center your thioughs in dhat curxrency. Give thanks for the flow.
g found in ed up his faced the appearancs, limitless crreative flow, ce and to spare.
There is an important
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A few years ago on a return flight from Europe about Thanksgiving time,
I waslooking out of the window of the modern jet plane,,,looking down on the Ocean some 30,000 fet beneath. And I imagine I saw the Pilgrim,s little caravel plying its wayti the New World. Propelled by wind and the set of thesails it took about 1580 hours for them to travel the same distance that was taking me about sixhours. And I visualized the pilgrim down , being tossed about by the pitch of the ship, the dashinb waves flooding over the deck, nighs and days filled with anxiety. And I thought hoiw incredulous these folks would have been if they had been told that in 370 years so many people would cross the Atlanmtic in this way
And I recalled the story of a caterpillar looking up and watching with awe a large butterfly flittinb a4round, and saying, "They'll nevcer get me up in one of thoie contraptions."
So the Pilgrims were looking up...and setting into operation a vital energy through thanksgiving. It was a conscious khoice to turn from darkness to light, to look beyond appearances. And it ws this looking up that opened the way for the rich blessings of our modern world morethan they knew or that we may acknowledge.
In Psalm 100 thre is a phrase that is normally dismissed as hheological gingerbread It is "Bless his name." Actually this is a vital link in the Psalm of Thansgivbing "give thanks to him, and bless his name." This means to "bless his nature."
Focus your attention on the divinity in every person, and the divine energy flow manifesting ss everyobject.
"Blessing" is the action part of Thjansgiving. You give hanks to God precisely by extebdubg tiysr hands inblessing. In Hebrew the word for thanksgiving is "YAW-DAW" which literally means "extending the hands." The wosd "bless" means "to confer prosperity upon." (look it up) So the call isto confer posperity on all the aspects of your life that are affected in any way by tje economy. Extend your hands is blessing to all the many things, experiences, and persons whose performances have suich a profound influence onyourlife.
Bless the car you drdive (or the subway, bus or train you ride) Bles the weather and tdhe traffic, bless your place of business or employment. Bless your employer andyour co-workertS".
Remember the poer of blessingis not reserved for holy places or for specially ordained persons. You are always orojecting some kindof thouight toward eveything you have oir hold. Sometimesi is restrictive, negative, limiting But you can bless all tdhings, confer posperity upon them, thus confer a consciousnessof abcundance uopin them. And the metaphysical law is - hings become to you what you see dhem as being.