Ollie says:
"Boy, if I were Moses, I'd be hittin de whole lotta dem with me fryin' pan."
Psalm 9:1-12, Exodus 16
James 5:7-11
"And the whole congregation of the people of Israel murmored
against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and said to them, `Would
that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when
we sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to the full; for you have
brought us out into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly by
hunger(Exodus 16:2-3)."
Most people don't like reading the bible because of all the
`thank you's.' The book of psalms is mostly about David thanking God
for all he has done for him. And then, like the introduction to
Thessalonians, we have apostles expressing their thankfulness about
people most of us couldn't care less about. This doesn't interest
many of us because we aren't that thankful. We like to get angry,
depressed or frustrated, complaining instead. Like the people of
Israel who escaped from Egypt, we complain about the difficulties of
our day to day lives instead of being thankful for all the other
things that we have.
You can take two different attitudes with you in life. Even if
you are unemployed, faced with the expenses of family, or having
barely enough money to feed your family, you still have things to be
thankful for. You could be thankful about your family's love. Or if
that doesn't work(maybe you're divorced), you can even be thankful
for the smaller, seemingly less important things in life.
Flouridated water, for instance, has saved many of us from serious
problems with cavities. We have better dentists and healthcare
professionals than any other time in history, and America is far
from being a dictatorship.
And even if all of these fail, one thing will never fail us.
God will never stop loving us. He sacrificed his Son, Jesus for your
sins, and nothing can take that away from you.
A lot of us think that being thankful will `jinx' us. Maybe
this is because our priorities are not with God. The book of
Proverbs says, "What the wicked dreads will come upon him, but the
desire of the righteous will be granted(Prov 10:24)." So, due to the
righteousness given to us through the faith in Christ, with
confidence, let us be thankful.
Dear Father in heaven, please give me a thankful heart that praises your name. Amen.