Carrying the Message

The idea of gratitude has until now been puzzling me, because I thought of it as a posture one takes to please a benefactor and keep him well-disposed toward oneself. There always seemed to me something mean about this--taking the attitude that the benefactor has to be buttered up to keep him producing. Gratitude toward God seemed very much out of place when looked at in this light. Any decent kind of God shouldn't have to be buttered up. He should be like a great artist or a magnificent chess player, so interested in doing well and making everything right for His creatures that He would be rather embarrassed if they began bowing and scraping before Him.