Thankfulness~The Secret Of Happiness

This grace of thankfulness diligently cultivated is one of the secrets of true happiness.

It is not the happy people who are thankful. It is the thankful people who are happy.

Happiness does not depend on what we have, else those who have the most would be the happiest. 

As a matter of fact, how often do we find that those who have the most are not the happiest?

Happiness does not depend on what we have: it rather depends upon our point of view, and he who has won the thankful point of view is always on the highway of gladness. 

The flower that to the farmer is a weed may to the botanist be treasure trove. The rain that is so vexing to the child is just what the angler has been looking for.

And so in life there are a thousand things that have an equal power to vex us or to bless us, according to our different point of view. 

No one who murmurs is ever really happy, and no one who worries is ever really happy.

They have forgotten God and left Him out, and to leave Him out is to leave out the music. 

And it is only when, through Christ our Savior, we come to see His loving hand in everything that we win the thankful, grateful heart without which nobody ever can be glad.

Ungrateful people are never happy people. They are always querulous and discontented. 

The more we are thankful for our everyday mercies, the more does life become a joyful thing. 

And that is why Christian life is always joyful, because everything the years may bring to us, Christ makes it possible for all who trust Him to cultivate the thankful spirit.

The tiniest gift from somebody we love is of more value than many a costly offering. 

We take it gratefully just because love is there, and, taking it gratefully, it makes us happy.

And so when we learn, as every man can learn, that God is love and that in Him we live, there is a worth in things we never saw before. 

The way to be glad is to be grateful, and the way to be grateful is to trust in God, to trust in Him as Jesus trusted Him on that night in which He was betrayed. 

Thus grows the assurance that there is no mistake, that He is watching, guiding, guarding, blessing us, which, when a man has learned, he ceases murmuring and finds that being thankful he is glad.

~George H. Morrison~