PART I
LESSON 195.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
W-195.1. Gratitude is a lesson hard to learn for those who look upon the world amiss. 2 The most that they can do is see themselves as better off than others. 3 And they try to be content because another seems to suffer more than they. 4 How pitiful and deprecating are such thoughts! 5 For who has cause for thanks while others have less cause? 6 And who could suffer less because he sees another suffer more? 7 Your gratitude is due to Him alone Who made all cause of sorrow disappear throughout the world.
W-195.2. It is insane to offer thanks because of suffering. 2 But it is equally insane to fail in gratitude to One Who offers you the certain means whereby all pain is healed, and suffering replaced with laughter and with happiness. 3 Nor could the even partly sane refuse to take the steps which He directs, and follow in the way He sets before them, to escape a prison that they thought contained no door to the deliverance they now perceive.
W-195.3. Your brother is your "enemy" because you see in him the rival for your peace; a plunderer who takes his joy from you, and leaves you nothing but a black despair so bitter and relentless that there is no hope remaining. 2 Now is vengeance all there is to wish for. 3 Now can you but try to bring him down to lie in death with you, as useless as yourself; as little left within his grasping fingers as in yours.
W-195.4. You do not offer God your gratitude because your brother is more slave than you, nor could you sanely be enraged if he seems freer. 2 Love makes no comparisons. 3 And gratitude can only be sincere if it be joined to love. 4 We offer thanks to God our Father that in us all things will find their freedom. 5 It will never be that some are loosed while others still are bound. 6 For who can bargain in the name of love?
W-195.5. Therefore give thanks, but in sincerity. 2 And let your gratitude make room for all who will escape with you; the sick, the weak, the needy and afraid, and those who mourn a seeming loss or feel apparent pain, who suffer cold or hunger, or who walk the way of hatred and the path of death. 3 All these go with you. 4 Let us not compare ourselves with them, for thus we split them off from our awareness of the unity we share with them, as they must share with us.
W-195.6. We thank our Father for one thing alone; that we are separate from no living thing, and therefore one with Him. 2 And we rejoice that no exceptions ever can be made which would reduce our wholeness, nor impair or change our function to complete the One Who is Himself completion. 3 We give thanks for every living thing, for otherwise we offer thanks for nothing, and we fail to recognize the gifts of God to us.
W-195.7. Then let our brothers lean their tired heads against our shoulders as they rest a while. 2 We offer thanks for them. 3 For if we can direct them to the peace that we would find, the way is opening at last to us. 4 An ancient door is swinging free again; a long forgotten Word re-echoes in our memory, and gathers clarity as we are willing once again to hear.
W-195.8. Walk, then, in gratitude the way of love. 2 For hatred is forgotten when we lay comparisons aside. 3 What more remains as obstacles to peace? 4 The fear of God is now undone at last, and we forgive without comparing. 5 Thus we cannot choose to overlook some things, and yet retain some other things still locked away as "sins." 6 When your forgiveness is complete you will have total gratitude, for you will see that everything has earned the right to love by being loving, even as your Self.
W-195.9. Today we learn to think of gratitude in place of anger, malice and revenge. 2 We have been given everything. 3 If we refuse to recognize it, we are not entitled therefore to our bitterness, and to a self-perception which regards us in a place of merciless pursuit, where we are badgered ceaselessly, and pushed about without a thought or care for us or for our future. 4 Gratitude becomes the single thought we substitute for these insane perceptions. 5 God has cared for us, and calls us Son. 6 Can there be more than this?
W-195.10. Our gratitude will pave the way to Him, and shorten our learning time by more than you could ever dream of. 2 Gratitude goes hand in hand with love, and where one is the other must be found. 3 For gratitude is but an aspect of the Love which is the Source of all creation. 4 God gives thanks to you, His Son, for being what you are; His Own completion and the Source of love, along with Him. 5 Your gratitude to Him is one with His to you. 6 For love can walk no road except the way of gratitude, and thus we go who walk the way to God.