Everyone loves to be appreciated. The Chicken Soup for the Soul series relates the true story of a junior high math teacher who had a class that was edgy and critical of each other after a week of studying new and difficult concepts.
She asked her students to take a few pieces of paper and write the name of each student in one column and the nicest thing they could think of about that person in another column. That weekend the teacher compiled these lists of appreciation and gave each student his or her list on Monday.
She wrote, “Before long, the entire class was smiling. ‘Really?’ I heard whispered. ‘I didn’t know others liked me so much.” She continued, “No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another again.”
Years later, one of the students died in Vietnam. At the funeral, the parents of the deceased young man asked to talk to the teacher. They told her that he kept that list in his wallet all those years afterward and even into the military service. Overhearing, various other students from that class who attended the funeral, showed their lists and spoke of how much this appreciation meant to them years later.
I have often remembered this story in my healing practice. When individuals have struggled with feelings of loneliness, unworthiness, frustration or being unloved, I have talked to them about how they are appreciated by God as one of His uniquely loved children. This is true about all of us – God, divine Love, is the Father and Mother of each of us.
In her monumental book on spirituality and health, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Christian Science discoverer Mary Baker Eddy helps the reader identify those qualities God expresses in all of us – qualities such as harmony, beauty, health, goodness, holiness and vitality. There are many lovely spiritual qualities that each of us inherits from God. These ideas are not static, but a part of our being. Wisdom, grace, patience and many other qualities are within us waiting to be acknowledged and lived. Eddy wrote, “God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis.”
Acknowledge, accept and cherish the qualities that God naturally expresses in you.
