Ingratitude

 

“Back in 1988, a Polish railway worker named Jan Grzebski was hit by a train. He lived ... but only barely. For the next 19 years (until the year 2007), Grzebski was in a coma. He awoke in 2007 to a whole new world. Nineteen years earlier, Poland was a communist state. Grzebski noted that back then meat was rationed and there were huge lines at nearly every gas station. And, "there was only tea and vinegar in the shops." But 19 years later, he awoke to a free nation where he said there were "people on the streets with cell phones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin."

“But something puzzled him. "What amazes me is all these people who walk around with their mobile phones and yet they never stop moaning." These people had freedom, and food and wealth greater than Poland had had for decades ... and yet Grzebski woke from his coma to find that ALL they seemed to want to do was grumble! If you don’t get into the habit of thanking God for what you DO have, you’ll soon become ungrateful because of what you DON’T have” (Jeff Strite, sermoncentral.com).

While I would never wish a coma of nearly two decades on anyone, it certainly would provide a unique perspective, wouldn’t it?  The gradual but relentless progress of time can have a numbing effect on gratefulness.  Our focus on the everyday grind of life often causes us to miss the big picture.

If a 19 year stretch suddenly disappeared from our life experience, would we be more grateful for what remained?  Likely so.  My guess is that things would come into sharper focus.  Like Mr. Grzebski, we might become more cognizant of how ingratitude can seep into our lives when we lose sight of where we have been and how we arrived at where we are at currently.

“Ingratitude is a crime more despicable than revenge, which is only returning evil for evil, while ingratitude returns evil for good” (William George Jordan).

 

God loves you!

Mike

Cultivating A Proper Focus

          I learned many lessons as a young lad, growing up on a farm in the Midwest.  Many of those experiences have faded in memory as time passes, but I still remember one lesson vividly.  I was finally old enough to operate the machinery used to cultivate corn.  This involved navigating a large tractor and an attached cultivator between rows of young, delicate corn seedlings.  In those days, if I remember correctly, the rows of corn were 38 inches apart.  That may seem like plenty of room, but it suddenly narrowed appreciably when one was tasked with guiding several thousand pounds of tractor and cultivator between those delicate plants.  The blades of the cultivator were set to destroy weeds as close as possible to the corn itself.

          My grandfather gave me a crash course in the finer points of my mission and, just like that, I was on my own.  I hadn’t gone far until I made a rookie mistake.  I was so concerned about damaging the corn that I was spending most of my time looking back at the cultivator instead of looking ahead at where I should have been steering the tractor.  When I did that, the tractor would veer off course and I ended up doing the very thing I was trying to prevent -- destroying corn.  After letting me struggle a bit, Grandpa stopped me (probably to save the rest of his crop) and explained the importance of focusing on what was ahead, i.e. driving the tractor straight.  If you keep the tractor between the rows of corn, the cultivator has to follow the same path.  It would do its job if I focused on doing mine.

          God reminds us of the same lesson through the writer of Hebrews.  We are encouraged to focus on Jesus instead of all of the other things that seek to distract us (Hebrews 12:1-2).  If we are aiming our lives at him, so much else in life tends to fall in place.  God will do His job if we focus on doing our job (Matthew 6:33).

God loves you!

Mike

Look Out, Lazarus!

 

“The large crowd of the Jews then learned that He was there; and they came, not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He raised from the dead.  But the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death also; because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and were believing in Jesus” (John 12:9–11).

Every time I read these verses, I’m struck by the response of the opponents of Jesus.  The Lord has just accomplished a great miracle by the power of God.  A dead man was raised to life!  Everyone was duly impressed -- except for the chief priests and Pharisees.  They gather together to discuss ways to deal with Jesus and decide that he must be killed.  For a time, the Savior and his followers step back from public ministry and retreat to the wilderness.  But with the approach of the Passover and the fulfillment of his earthly calling, Jesus and the disciples must return to the holy city.  Tensions are high.  Crowds and flocking to see the miracle worker as well as Lazarus, the one raised from the dead.  For that reason, the Jewish leaders now plot to kill, not only Jesus, but also Lazarus!  It’s not enough to just kill the miracle worker.  Now the results of his work must be destroyed.  Incredible!

I suppose the stubborn opposition of these men shouldn’t surprise me.  When one rejects the light and surrenders to darkness, this is the inevitable result.  Jesus confronted these men about this very thing earlier (John 8:43–45).  They are acting just like their father, the devil.  Sons and daughters of the devil will act like their father, opposing all that is good and right, even if it means killing someone who has been recently raised from the dead.  Like the thief Jesus talks about in his teaching about the good shepherd, those who give themselves over to evil will seek “...to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10).  When eyes and ears are closed to the truth, this is to be expected.

 God loves you! Mike

Normal

“I sure wish things would get back to normal.”  My guess is that you have heard this statement or even made it yourself at some point since the beginning of the response to the coronavirus pandemic back in March.  In some measure, everyone’s life has been disrupted.  At one end of the spectrum, there are relatively minor inconveniences, like not being able to eat at your favorite restaurant or go to the movies whenever you want.  At the other end are much more serious things like loss of jobs and shuttering of businesses.  Wherever you are on the spectrum, you have likely caught yourself yearning for some semblance of “normal.”

Have you considered that “normal” may never return?  It has happened over and over again in history.  We see several examples in the Bible.  God called Abraham and things were never really the same again.  He had a “new normal” from that point on.  Due to their sin, both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah were taken into captivity.  Although some eventually returned home, “normal” as they knew it was as a distant memory.  A “new normal” had to be built.  The “normal” of first century Jewish life was decisively altered in A.D. 70 with the ravaging of Judah and the destruction of Jerusalem and it’s temple by God through the Roman army.  The “normal” they were used to was gone forever, never to return.

Have you considered that, sometimes, it’s best that “normal” doesn’t return?  Without the events listed above, God’s rescue plan for the world through the Messiah and the New Covenant would have been derailed.  We would have been stuck in the “old normal” of estrangement from God.  The “old normal” may have been comfortable, but it was deadly to our spiritual health.  A “new normal” was desperately needed.

Rather than pining for the “old normal,” perhaps we could look for the opportunities God might be providing in the “new.”  It’s easy to get comfortable with the “old normal” and miss the growth that comes through stretching to adapt to the “new.”

God loves you!

Mike