Gloria:

Dear God, a sweet friend from years ago sent me a letter in which she brought up two things that pulled my heart.

She said that in addition to Thanksgiving being a day of thanking You, it is also a day of celebrating relationships.

Of course, the relationship I am most grateful for is the one with You, dear God.

God:

I am grateful for all My children and the sweetness that exists between Us.

Gratitude is knowing that something is great. Knowing that something is great is knowing your connection to it. Knowing your connection to it is knowing that it is yourself reflected to you as in a mirror.

So the more you appreciate what you see and interact with, the more you are appreciating yourself and Me.

My children are My gift to the world. I packaged you as My love, and you appeared as God's love on earth searching for itself.

Giving love is an act of gratitude for the event itself. The event is life. Gratitude is like drinking water, and thanking it for quenching your thirst.

Gratitude is opposed to taking things for granted.

What if you chose each day as a special treat offered to you on a silver tray? What if you knew your life was poured out for you from Heaven?

What if you were a visitor to earth from another dimension, would you not marvel at the sights and the magnificence of everything?

Well, My dears, you are visitors from another realm. You are a visitor sent here to select earth's jewels, and that is what you are her to look for.

You would amaze at the growing things coming out of the earth. You would amaze at the blue of the sky and the white clouds it floats. You would amaze at the sky collected on earth in basins and named sea with boats that bobble on the top of it and sail from shore to shore. You would amaze at the light from the golden sun and the light from the white moon, and the same dancing light in human eyes. You would amaze at things that come out of the sky and touch you and moisten you and the earth. And you would amaze at the balance of everything within this earthly kingdom.

Thankfulness is awareness as faith is awareness.

Gratitude is touching base with Me. It is good.

Gloria:

The other thing in her letter was this quotation attributed to Christ speaking to a Blessed Sr. Faustina of Poland in her book of his words, Divine Mercy in My Soul:

"My daughter, do not pay so much attention to the vessel of grace as to the grace itself which I give you, because you are not always pleased with the vessel, and then the graces, too, become deficient. I want to guard you from that, and I want you never to pay attention to the vessel in which I send you my grace. Let all the attention of your soul be concentrated on responding to My Grace…"

Karen says that all the time, and I am so grateful that she does. She emphasizes, not only that we see others as vessels for You, but ourselves as well, so that when we do some good, we know that it is You doing the good and that we are only the vessel. Is this acknowledgement of ourselves and others as vessels for Your love the same as gratitude?

God:

Love is a great gratitude. If you consider Me as a bell, love and gratitude pull the rope and ring Me.

Gratitude is the opposite of selfishness. Selfishness is unawareness of what is beyond your nose.

The selfish ones think they are the axis of the world and that it spins for them. True, the world does spin for them, but not for them alone.

How selfish is the sense of unworthiness that is endemic on earth.

When you feel unworthy, you think only of yourself because you do not feel worthy enough to get beyond your own confines.

When you feel negative, you predict and project yourself as impaled.

You are a powerful creator. If you created suffering and boundaries, you can also create joy and freedom. What is finding yourself stuck but your imposition of boundaries on yourself?

We come back to gratefulness. If you can be grateful for today and yesterday instead of railing about them, you will move your life up several notches.

The miracles that come with gratitude will appear before your eyes because you will have pulled them up on the screen of your life instead of a repeat of past woes.

When you keep pulling up thoughts such as: "My life is awful. Nothing ever goes right for me…" you set the stage for more of the same.

Set another scene.

Selfishness is holding on.

Unselfishness is letting go.

Selfishness is dragging your feet.

Unselfishness is flying far afield.

Take the road of gratitude.

There are signs along the way. Gratitude picks out the signs that point ahead. Ingratitude crabs and complains and keeps going back to the signs that point back, and so creates the same scene of the same crime.

Will you do this for Me?

Write down three things you are grateful for right now.

Then see if you can stop at three.

And don't write down or speak the things you are not grateful for.

No more of "this always happens to me. I don't get supported."

Your thoughts make your support.

Support Me, and you climb a beautiful vine covered with flowers and the sweet scent of Heaven.

Heaven is yours. If Heaven is anybody's — I assure you it is — it is yours.

Heaven is yours. I give it to you. It was made for you. Take it.

Throw away the withered vine that has kept you in the same old story and now move to another episode of God on earth.

Think of Me instead of yourself. Think of furthering My love. Clutch nothing. Free yourself. Come with Me.