Sister Sheri Peterson
Ward Music Director
COUNT YOUR MANY BLESSINGS - Hymn 241 Doctrine and Covenants 78:17-19 Alma 34:38 The repeated reminder in this hymn to "count your blessings" is a motto that can change our outlook from self-pity and discouragement to one of gratitude. President Joseph F. Smith wrote many years ago in the Juvenile Instructor : "The spirit of gratitude is always pleasant and satisfying because it carries with it a sense of helpfulness to others; it begets love and friendship, and engenders divine influence. Gratitude is said to be the memory of the heart. "And where there is an absence of gratitude, either to God or man, there is the presence of vanity and the spirit of self-sufficiency." (Quoted in Gospel Doctrine, 5th ed. Deseret Book Co., 1939, p. 262)
We are commanded throughout scripture to "thank the Lord thy God in all things" (D&C 59:7), to "let thy heart be full of thanks unto God" (Alma 37:37), and to be "always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive" (Alma 7:23). Our gratitude opens the way for the Lord to pour out additional blessings: "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." (D&C 78:19) Some people look at life with no other purpose than to find out what is missing. This hymn exhorts us to move beyond such a narrow outlook, to rise above the corrosive effects of envy, and to realize that followers of Jesus Christ are heirs to the greatest of all blessings. (Davidson, Karen Lynn; Our Latter-Day Hymns, Deseret Book Co. 1988 p.249)
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