Do We Have Gratitude in Our Hearts?

What follows is a quote delivered by Abraham Lincon as part of a resolution in 1863.  I ran across it while pondering why we as Americans have come to suffer from ingratitude to such a great degree.  It concerns me greatly, and I wonder how long the Lord will continue to bless America if we do not repent of this.  Apparently this is not new!


"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in number, wealth, and power as no other Nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God who made us.


"It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our . . . sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness." (John Wesley Hill, Abraham Lincoln, Man of God, 4th ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, p. 391.)


As it happens, I found the Lincoln quote in an address given by President Marion G. Romney during the October 1982 General Conference.  He went on to say this:

"To the Lord Jesus, who bought us with a great price, we owe an undying debt of gratitude. It is impossible for us, weak mortals as we are, to fully comprehend and appreciate the suffering he endured on the cross so that he might gain for us victory over death. And even less can we understand the suffering he endured in Gethsemane so that we might obtain forgiveness of our sins. 'Which suffering,' he said, 'caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink.' (D&C 19:18.)


But nevertheless, he endured it for our sake. None of us could have endured that suffering. No mortal man nor any number of men together could have endured it. All people who understand what Jesus did for us ought to love him and demonstrate that love by rendering to him, in a realistic manner, thanks and gratitude."

I hope that as a family and as individuals that we always remember and are grateful for all that the Lord has done and continues to do for us.