President Nelson invited all to join him for a special message released on Friday morning about the healing power of gratitude. As part of that message, in which he shared things both personal and profound, he issued the following challenge:
“I invite you—just for the next seven days—to turn social media into your own personal gratitude journal. Post every day about what you are grateful for, whom you are grateful for, and why you are grateful. At the end of seven days, see if you feel happier and more at peace. Use the hashtag #GiveThanks. Working together, we can flood social media with a wave of gratitude that reaches the four corners of the earth. Perhaps this will fulfill, in part, the promise God gave to Father Abraham, that through his descendants ‘all families of the earth [shall] be blessed’ (Genesis 12:3).”
Hundreds of thousands of people have taken the challenge and social media is truly being flooded with gratitude. It has certainly reinvented and refreshed all of the newsfeeds that had previously been full of division, disillusionment and despair. Though there are countless posts worth reading, here are 8 in particular that we found especially moving:
Non LDS friend posted this on Facebook. #givethanks pic.twitter.com/DWxJTGS0nm
— Mark RK 🇫🇮🇯🇲 (@Mark_RK) November 21, 2020
Families are meant to be eternal. That has been Heavenly Father’s plan from the beginning. How grateful I am to know where my precious wife, Barbara, is and that we will be together again, with our family, for all eternity. #GiveThanks pic.twitter.com/uju0BUmG5V
— M. Russell Ballard (@BallardMRussell) November 21, 2020
Elizabethe WaltonNovember 23, 2020
I don't have any social media so I am grateful to be able to post something here. I am grateful that we had twelve years to live in a beautiful home in Palmyra NY. I am grateful for the many friends I made there, for the opportunity to walk the Sacred Grove whenever we wanted, to share our home and out faith with so many guests, family, and friends over the years. I am grateful that when my husband got sick and we could no longer do that, that our loving Heavenly Father prepared a way for us to live safely and comfortably near family, and that we will be able to build a house to meet his needs. I am grateful for a wonderful husband, who was an active and talented professional photographer, and had to completely change his life in ways he really did not enjoy. But he did sayo with grace and faith and patience. His art and his photography endure as a testament to his talent and his faith. He is so good to me. I am forever grateful that Heavenly Father brought us together! Elizabethe Walton #GiveThanks