Take a moment and answer this question. Yes, I am addressing you directly. Take a brief pause from reading these words to focus on this: Here’s the question:
“Do I take things for granted? If so, what?”
If you followed the prompt, chances are that you made a quick 3-5 second list in your head. My own list went as follows:
1) Family, 2) Time, 3) Whoops! I am drawing a blank on #3.
However, upon some time and reflection additional thoughts surfaced: health, sleep, relationships, anything that stabilizes me, safety and security, education, and technology. Then my thoughts extended to third world countries who probably don’t take things for granted: clean water and sanitation, food supply, basic healthcare, personal safety, and the list goes on…. On a side note, my mother always said to eat everything on my plate because people in developing countries are starving.
Why do we take things for granted? I was having a conversation where someone identified our church building as something we can take for granted. How could this be? Can you imagine the amount of ministry that has gone on inside of it? How many lives were won for the Kingdom? How many hearts have been changed? How many conversations have brought us closer to the Father? How many wedding unions have been held? How many people have experienced healing in their relationships? How many memorials and funerals have gently aided people in their grief? How much worship has God received from his people? How many prayers have been made on behalf of others? How many children have been touched by the Lord? How much change has there been in our city?
Let’s shift our focus from the building to the people within it. Over one Senior Pastor’s tenure, he has seen a vast variety of God moving in the lives of his congregation. What if we could quantify it? Let’s do the math. Take the breadth and width of what that Pastor has seen and experienced in his long ministry and add the value and impact of all the ministries of all the pastors and ministry leaders of that church. Then multiply that kind of potential across every person in attendance. What do we have? I guess my point is that no one can know the true value of one person’s ministry. Even the person themselves can’t know the true value of it or its true cost or its reward for they all are far reaching.
God, however, does not take His people or the place where they worship granted. For He knows every nuance and every cost and impact that takes place in ministry long before our history came to be. He has ordained it. Now, take whatever number you came up with as a result of our math problem and multiply it across every church and every person that God has used today both in the past and in the future. Very quickly we get a sense that God is very deliberate and intentional in His decisions, with specific plans for His people.
Life, and everything we are blessed with, everything we have, should be appreciated and not taken for granted. Developing a mindful awareness of this kind of perspective and actively practicing gratitude can help us cultivate a deeper appreciation for the richness of our lives.
Gratitude helps us ask the questions: Am I enjoying each day God has given me? Am I loving Him? Am I loving others? Am I loving my life? Am I doing something with this life I have been blessed with? Am I following my heart, pursuing my dreams, and finding pleasure in my life? Am I influencing my world? Am I making a difference? Or am I taking all of this for granted?
Think about it.
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