Ingratitude towards God results from two chief causes: Firstly, a failure to recognize God’s gifts showered on us every day, and secondly, an even more fundamental failure to recognize God’s presence in our life. Accordingly, developing a spirit of gratitude by recognizing and acknowledging God’s gifts helps heighten our awareness of God’s presence in our daily lives and thereby assists efforts towards that elusive goal of continuous prayer. And it is this state of continuous prayer that then allows us to receive with grateful hearts the Gift of gifts—God himself in the intimacy of love and abiding friendship that even here on earth offers us a foretaste of heaven.