A prayer of gratitude is more powerful than a prayer of asking.
Often it is when times are tough that we learn to be grateful for the good. But when good times come again, we trade away our gratitude.
In 1864, Brigham Young called a group of saints to settle the banks of the Muddy River southwest of Mesquite, Nevada. The Muddy Mission, as it would be called, was to be the southern extent of the Mormon Pioneers’ Cotton Mission, with the hopes of shipping cotton crops to a mill in St. George.
The winter and spring must have been nice there. But the summers were unbearable — as mosquitoes, scorpions and snakes proliferated. Malaria was common.
Abraham Kimball described the children walking home from school, barefoot. “They would take their bonnets, aprons, or some green brush in their hands, run as far as they could, throw them down and stand on them until their feet cooled off. Then run again.”
After paying property tax to both Utah and Arizona territories, Nevada territory expanded into the area and Lincoln County asked for two years of back taxes, payable in gold.
Brigham Young told the settlers they needed to decide for themselves whether to leave or stay — so in the spring of 1871, all 400 settlers gathered for a vote. All but one family decided to leave for Utah.
About 150 of those destitute settlers ended up in Long Valley. There in Orderville, the saints experimented with living the united order, where all property was shared in common. In the coming few years, the town swelled to over 700 and prospered. The 150 settlers from the Muddy had once had nothing, and this memory served as a basis for comparison as thy began to enjoy the treasures of food, clothing and housing.
As time passed, neighboring towns seemed to surpass Orderville. Although the people of Orderville were living better than they ever had, the new basis of comparison was the prosperity of other nearby settlements. Their memory of their poverty on the Muddy had faded.
One boy who was denied a new pair of pants by the Orderville factory (because his old pants were not yet worn out) secretly began shearing the wool from that year’s docked lambs’ tails and stored it in sacks. When he was sent up to Nephi to sell the town’s wool, he took his own wool up and exchanged it for a pair of store pants.
The new pants created quite a stir in Orderville. The town leaders kindly told the boy his pants actually belonged to the Order, and he gave them up. Then the factory took the pants apart and used them as a pattern for all future Orderville pants. And the first pair produced went to the enterprising young man.
Then all the other boys wanted a pair — but since their pants were not worn out yet, the Orderville factory denied them new pants too. Well, they found ways to wear out their pants — in the shed where the grinding wheel was housed. Finally the elders gave in, and the new-style pants were produced for everyone.
The Order in Orderville lasted just 10 years.
Henry B. Eyring, serving in the Presiding Bishopric of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said that Orderville’s problem was the problem of not remembering. “That is a problem we must solve too,” he said.
Eyring added, “Just as they forgot poverty on the Muddy, we so easily forget that we came into life with nothing. Whatever we get soon seems our natural right, not a gift. And we forget the giver. Then our gaze shifts from what we have been given to what we don’t have yet.”
Finding Well-Being
Gratitude as a principal has held great meaning in theology, with Reformationist Martin Luther referring to it as “the basic Christian attitude.” Along the same line, theologian Karl Barth said that “grace and gratitude go together like heaven and Earth; grace evokes gratitude like the voice and echo.”
Outside of theology though, psychologists have long appreciated gratitude as integral to well-being. One British study by Wood, Joseph and Maltby in 2009 showed that gratitude was a better predictor of a person’s well-being than 30 of the most commonly-studied personality traits. It was such an important predictor of well-being, in fact, that the authors even wondered whether gratitude is actually an aspect of well-being rather than a predictor or well-being.
In another study done at Eastern Washington University in 2003, Philip C. Watkins and partner researchers found that of various negative states, depression “showed the strongest and most reliable inverse associations with gratitude,” suggesting that gratitude could be used as a bulwark against depressive episodes.
They wrote that “gratitude might promote happiness by enhancing one’s experience of positive events, by enhancing adaptive coping to negative events, by enhancing encoding and retrieval of positive events, by enhancing one’s social network, or by preventing or mitigating depression.”
A Good God
Setting aside a strictly-secular view of gratitude, however, I still turn back to something else that was in the Watkins study — a finding that gratitude was also correlated to religiosity — or in other words, those who are intrinsically religious tend to be more grateful. “Intrinsic religiosity may enhance gratitude because these individuals see the ultimate source of all benefits in life in a good God,” the study noted, “because all benefits are experienced as gifts from God.”
Seeing all good in life as a “gift” I think is important in the pursuit of gratitude and well-being. Gifts are not entitlements, for instance — and our expectation of receiving them is as low as the “basis” for what the impoverished settlers of the Muddy Mission might have expected in life.
I wonder if the most significant disruptor to gratitude then, is entitlement — or when life falls short of our expectations. Yes, life is full or disappointment. Loss hurts — I know personally — but I have to remind myself that in spite of life’s losses, I am still not as naked as when I was born.
In spite of the great sorrows of this world, there is a good God looking over all. Maybe you haven’t found God yet — but keep looking and you will find Him. Why does a good God allow suffering? Apparently He is more interested in crafting us into heroes than in paving an easy way for us.
A Prayer of Gratitude
Now, a final word on the power of gratitude — especially in our faith. I’ve thought a lot on what Jesus taught in Matthew 7: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.” I won’t get into the heavy burden we ourselves must bear to properly ask, seek, and knock — our oft-forgotten duties. But the lesson here is that the good God wants to bless us, if we will diligently ask, seek, and knock. And yes, this actually works.
There is another prayer offered to God in connection with sought-after blessings, however, and that is the prayer of gratitude following the blessing. God is all knowing, and I also believe that God is not subject to time like we are. This isn’t doctrinal, but I suspect that when we are asking for a blessing, God has already heard our future prayer of gratitude for that blessing. I wonder if some blessings we receive are because God has already seen our gratitude for it.
A prayer of gratitude is more powerful than a prayer of asking.
Indeed, as latter-day scripture attests, “And he who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more.”
Feature image caption: A drawing from an old painting of Orderville around 1880, with the apartment housing units (call “shanties”) bordering the town square. From Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 84, Number 2, 2016.
Read Let’s Be More Like Squanto, by Karen Munson, for another Byway Thanksgiving editorial.