Today-
…On the way to worship I got a text from my friend, who is a brand new Christian. “I am so excited. My husband is coming with me.” And so he did! How many times have I taken it for granted that my husband is going with me to worship!
…We had a prayer before our service for a brand new baby. We prayed for her father, who is not a Christian, to be the kind of Father that he wants and needs to be. How many times have I taken for granted the fact that the father of my children has always been a faithful Christian?
…We prayed, as a church, for a home recently under attack by the devil. How often do I take for granted the blessing of thirty-four wonderful years married to the same man?
…We had a meal together as a church family, but I forgot about it until I got there this morning, so I sent my daughter to Taco Bell to pick up 30 tacos. I didn’t even think twice about that. But how many times have I been in mission areas where people did not have access to any fast food at all, and, even if they had, they would scarcely have had money enough to purchase it?
…I had asked for folks at West Huntsville to bring me the center cardboard rollers from their toilet paper rolls for a project I am doing at PTP. I had about eight big bagfuls to bring home from services today. Definitely a first world response to that request! I never even think to be thankful for toilet paper. (But I did think of it once in a “bathroom” that was a hole in the ground on the mission field in Ukraine!)
…We were almost out of gas on our way home and so we stopped at the station and filled up, not one, but two tanks. That’s right. Three people went to services in two cars. I know people who ride bikes for miles and miles on dirt roads to worship. How often do I fill up without even thinking of the luxury that it is?
…I came home and packed up a roast, two containers of home-baked cookies and two containers of watermelon to send home with my daughter. How many people “perish with hunger” while, in our house, there is “bread enough and to spare”?
…I listened to three packed rows of children recite Bible facts in our “Kidsing” class. How many times have I visited churches in which there were not enough children to even form a class?
…I kept moving down the pew as the friends of Nuris, who has only been a Christian for three weeks, just kept pouring in for our evening service. The family next to me moved to a different section to make room for all of these people coming in just a bit late. She had brought a dozen people, in all…twelve people who, with the exception of two, had never been in a worship assembly of the church of Christ. How often do I, someone who has been a Christian for 45 years, fail to ask my friends and neighbors who need the Lord to come learn of him with me?
…Our elders got up and addressed our congregation asking for prayers for their wisdom and for people who are dealing with a very difficult situation. How many times do I take good shepherds for granted, when so many have no shepherds at all?
…A very sweet sister stopped and said some very encouraging words to me…words I really needed to hear. But only this past week, I heard from a fellow-preacher’s wife who is receiving quite the opposite of encouragement (in fact, blatant and unwarranted criticism) from a very outspoken sister at every service she attends. How many times I fail to realize the great blessing of strength that comes from sweet sisters!
…Our fellowship hall was abuzz again in the evening with a good-bye party for six college students who are off to Freed Hardeman University and another couple of kids who are off to Auburn. I guess I take it for granted, too, that almost all of our kids who want to go to college can go. That’s surely a first-world situation.
…We stopped at Zaxby’s for supper. Now kickin’ chicken wings with no cooking?… I hope I don’t ever take that for granted!
…A sweet friend telephoned when I got home this evening to talk to me about an addiction she is overcoming and a new start she is trying to make. She’s a young teen and her father has addictions of his own. I’m sure I have neglected to express my gratitude to God for the situation of my birth; modest by the standards of the world, but rich in the real treasures…a birth to two Christian parents.
…I’m lying beside my husband who is watching an online documentary about Henry VII, while I am typing on my own laptop. I know couples, even millennials in other countries, who have never owned one, much less two computers.
…There’s a cat that we are pet-sitting on the foot of our bed. Clocks are ticking around us and crickets are chirping outside our window. We are tired at the end of this and every Sunday. On our way home, Glenn said, ’Isn’t it nice to have a place…our quiet place to come home to? Don’t you just love waking up in that wonderful spot every morning with the light streaming through the windows as you contemplate the peace and how that nobody is going to bother you?” He’s right, you know. (I was thinking of laundry, PTP lessons, appointments, cooking, cleaning, sewing and this wretched way that my back is aching.) Maybe he is a little bit of a romantic. Maybe he is just good at not taking so much for granted. Maybe he is meek and is “inheriting” this earth (Matthew 5:5). Whatever you tag it, looking through the lens of your blessings rather than your burdens is a great way to “own” your own surroundings. It is a better way to be affected by your “world”. It is one way to “inherit the earth.” I want to be more like my husband. Today.
p.s. This Wednesday at noon: deadline for ordering WH purity day t-shirts. Go here for details: https://thecolleyhouse.org/someone-who-loves-you-went-to-a-great-purity-day-this-weekend-and-all-you-can-get-is-this-beautiful-t-shirt.
