Greetings and welcome to the Daily Article podcast for Thursday, July the 11th, 2024.

I'm Chris Elkins of the Denison Forum, narrating today's article written by Dr. Jim Denison.

Amidst all the bad news in the news this week, let's focus on some good news.

A new study of gratitude and morality

among older adults, in this case older U.S. female nurses, found that those who more frequently

noticed and felt grateful for positive experiences tended to live longer. This report is by no

means an outlier. For example, psychologists

recruited a group of participants and asked one-third to write up to five things for which they

were grateful that week. A second group was asked to record hassles or irritations. A third

was told to record events that affected them over the week. After doing this

for 10 weeks, those in the gratitude group rated their life more favorable than those in the

other two groups, both with regard to life as a whole and in relation to the upcoming week.

They experienced fewer symptoms, a physical illness, and they spent

significantly more time exercising. In another study, participants who wrote letters of gratitude

to other people were happier and more satisfied with life. They also experienced decreased

symptoms of depression. Cicero would not have been surprised, calling gratitude

not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. Plato likewise claimed,

a grateful mind is a great mind which eventually attracts to itself great things.

Scripture similarly commands us in 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 18 to give thanks

in all circumstances and in Ephesians 5 verse 20 to give thanks always and for everything to God

the Father. Why? How? And how does this discussion relate to the massive cultural issues we face today?

Gratitude in challenging times does not require naivety or minimize the suffering we face,

...