The Ease of Ingratitude – Sunday Thought For The Day

The following was written for February 14, 2016, “Our Daily Bread” by Randy Kilgore.
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Thwip, thwap. Thwip, thwap.

The windshield wipers slamming back and forth trying to keep up with the pelting rain only added to my irritation as I adjusted to driving the used car I had just purchased—an old station wagon with 80,000+ miles and no side-impact airbag protection for the kids.

To get this station wagon, and some badly needed cash for groceries, I had sold the last “treasure” we owned: a 1992 Volvo station wagon with side-impact airbag protection for the kids. By then, everything else was gone. Our house and our savings had all disappeared under the weight of uncovered medical expenses from life-threatening illnesses.

“Okay, God,” I actually said out loud, “now I can’t even protect my kids from side-impact crashes. If anything happens to them, let me tell You what I’m going to do . . .”

Thwip, thwap. Thwip, thwap. (Gulp.)

I was instantly ashamed. In the previous 2 years God had spared both my wife and my son from almost certain death, and yet here I was whining about “things” I had lost. Just like that I’d learned how quickly I could grow ungrateful to God. The loving Father, who did not spare His own Son so I could be saved, had actually spared my son in a miraculous fashion.

“Forgive me, Father,” I prayed. Already done, My child.

How easy it is, Lord, to let the trials of the moment strip us of the memory of Your protection and provision. Praise You, Father, for Your patience and Your unending, unconditional love.

Thankfulness is the soil in which joy thrives.

INSIGHT:
Because of severe persecution in the days of the early church, Jewish Christians were being pressured to abandon Christianity and revert to Judaism. The letter to the Hebrews was written to encourage these believers to remain faithful to Christ. The unnamed writer affirms that Jesus is God’s Son and is superior to angelic beings, the Mosaic covenant, the Aaronic priesthood, and animal sacrifices (Heb. 1–10). Because Jesus offered Himself once for all as a perfect sacrifice (7:27–28; 9:12, 28), He is the author and perfecter of true faith (12:2), “the mediator of a new covenant” (9:15; 12:24), and the giver of “a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (12:28). In response to who He is, His followers are to “be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe” (v. 28).

READ:Hebrews 12:18-29
18 For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest,

19 And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more:

20 (For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart:

21 And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:)

22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,

23 To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,

24 And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.

25 See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven:

26 Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.

27 And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:

29 For our God is a consuming fire.