Do You Forget To Say Thank You?
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If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.
Meister Eckhart
http://www.quotegarden.com/thanksgiving.html
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There was a post in Sunday’s “Godvine” the struck a chord with me. It points out that although we are quick to ask God for things when we pray, we are not as quick to thank Him when our prayers have been answered or to say thank you simply for the multitude of blessings he bestows upon us every day. And yet, when we compare our lives to so many others throughout the world, most of us reading this are indeed, fortunate! The author of this particular post made some points that are well worth thinking about and remembering!
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- If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep you are richer than 75% of this world.
- If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy.
- If you received this on your own computer, you are part of the 1% in the world who has that opportunity.
- If you woke up this morning with more health than illness…You are more blessed than the many who will not even survive this day.
- If you have never experienced the fear in battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation … You are ahead of 700 million people in the world.
- If you can attend a church without the fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death you are envied by, and more blessed than, three billion people in the world.
- If your parents are still alive and still married …you are very rare.
- If you can hold your head up and smile, you are not the norm, you’re unique to all those in doubt and despair.
- If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world who cannot read at all.
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We are among the most entitled generation of any that has lived. We assume that everything is here for our own personal use and enjoyment, forgetting in the process that everything must also be maintained and tended to so that it will always there for us. We can not take and take without giving back or we might just find ourselves living in a world that has no resources left to support human life. And yes, that is not likely to occur within our lifetime or even the lifetime of our children or their children or their children’s children. But make no mistake, it WILL happen unless we effect changes in the way we live TODAY! And those changes must first begin with professing our belief that God is the one to whom the responsibility rests for not just providing every single thing we are blessed with but also gifting us with the capacity to appreciate and be thankful for all of those gifts. And yes, we must also change much about the way we live and that means altering our perceptions of what our hearts and our minds tell us are the things we need rather than simply looking only at the things we want. Indeed, all of our choices must be tempered with the wisdom to decide which of God’s gifts are the ones that will provide us with the most satisfaction, worth and benefit. And we must acknowledge God’s beneficence and then defer to His wisdom that He will continue to provide for us as long as we willingly follow as He leads us down the path of life!
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The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Genesis 2:15 ESV
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