How’s my ‘attitude of gratitude’?

Friday 3-6-15 (Home) Scripture reading:    Deut 3-4    Ps 36   Mark 13

S.  Ps 36:6-8  You care for people and animals alike, O LORD.  How precious is your unfailing love, O God!  All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings. You feed them from the abundance of your own house, letting them drink from your rivers of delight. NLT 

O.  God designed a marvelous world of perfect balance with abundance for all its inhabitants, human and animals alike.

A.  Robert J. Morgan writes in his book ‘Then Sings My Soul’ page 149, “One of the strange things about the ‘attitude of gratitude’ is that we tend to exhibit it in reverse proportion to the number of blessings received.”  The more we are blessed, the less thankful we tend to become… for we start taking our blessings for granted. 

A group of about 25 lovely Christian ladies from “Operation Blessing” in the USA were visiting Argentina and asked me to take them to see our island work where we were at that time in the process of building a church.  We loaded them aboard one of our boats, the Maribel, and since it was a lovely morning, we opened all the windows.  It was a three hour trip from the mainland to our “Betel de los Alcanfores” island.  With a microphone aboard, I told these elegant ladies how God had stopped us at Juan Chico’s dock and about how her husband had been about to commit suicide and the family was saved.  I wanted these women to meet Juana.  So we stopped at her fragile, collapsing dock in front of her tiny little shack… no electricity… no running water… no indoor toilet. 

Juana, not expecting visitors, came out onto the dock and was delighted to see us.  I climbed up on the dock and translated the conversation for the women aboard.  I simply asked Juana to say whatever she had on her heart to these ladies. 

Expressing great joy she burst into telling these ladies how blessed she and her family were.  “God is so good to us!  Why just last Saturday I was telling the Lord how good it would be if we could have some milk for my children.  And only a few hours later the pastors came by and gave us a week’s supply of powdered milk!”  She went on and on describing the generosity of God.  As I translated I looked at these women all decked out with nice clothing and jewels dangling… and I saw dark masquera streaming down their cheeks.

We said good-bye to Juana and started the motor to continue our journey… when one of the ladies who had obviously been crying, called me to her side.  “How do I make out this check to help you build your church?” she asked and then handed me $1,000 dollars. 

P.  Lord, I am so blessed!  I echo the words of the psalmist, “How precious is your unfailing love, O God!”  For 83 years You have supplied my every need and many of my wants, too.  You created this world to sustain us all abundantly.  But our sinful race has messed it up pretty bad.  Some of us have too much, while others have little or nothing.  Open our eyes to see as You see.  Open our hearts to be love as You love.  And help us to open our wallets to carry Your love, Your light and Your blessing into every dark corner of this globe.  Amen.

Ralph