Back when Rudyard Kipling was England’s most popular writer, the rumor went out that his publisher paid him one dollar per word for his work. Some Cambridge students, upon hearing this, cabled Kipling one dollar along with these instructions: “Please send us one of your very best words.” Kipling replied with a one-word telegram: “Thanks.”
The word thanks is indeed one of our very best words. The writer of Proverbs expressed it well: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” We have so many people at Imagine Church who have embraced this central virtue of life and who live with an instinctive sense of gratitude.
Those who live with a sense of gratitude have truly learned the secret of life. Dr. Fred Craddock once said that if an angel spoke to him at the birth of his 
children, and said you get to pick one virtue with which you can endow this child; what would it be? Love? Joy? Patience? Honesty? Wisdom? All of them are good; all of them are valuable. But Dr. Craddock said he wouldn’t hesitate. If he could bestow one virtue upon his children, it would be gratitude. “Let them be grateful,” he said.
I have noticed over the years that I have never met anyone who was grateful who, at the same time, was also mean, bitter, angry, spiteful, or stingy. You don’t find any of these peculiarities in someone who is truly grateful.
