The world just screams and falls apart
–Jeff Magnum, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, 1998

Thank you God for food. I love to gorge myself on it.
Thank you God for friends. I love to slander them behind their backs.
Thank you God for family. I love to use them for too many things to count.
Thank you God for my bed. I love to sleep when there are more productive things to be done.
Thank you God for money. Can’t forget money. I love money. What would I do without money? I couldn’t buy shit I don’t need without money.

So many generic Thank Yous we offer up. And, while these are not horrible things to be thankful for, though perhaps our reasons for loving them so much are. Rather, these are wonderful things to be thankful for (well except for maybe an abundance of money – unless we are giving it away – but we’re probably not because if we were really thankful for it, it would be our top priority to see others enjoy the very same blessings we have been gifted), but there seems to be a disconnect in our weak minds. When do we praise Christ for the miserable things in life? After all, these are the things that will draw us near him. These are the truly valuable things — the priceless things.

When disaster strikes, the cry of “Where was God?!” self-righteously rings out among the masses – as if we feel we have some hold on how God should behave. Nevermind the countless circumstances that have gone our way as we smugly think to ourselves that we somehow had something to do with it (when, in most/all cases, we did not). We will take all the credit when things go our way and we will defame the name of the One who spoke us into being when major (or even minor) tragedy strikes. The injustices we strike on our fellow man on a daily basis are ignored as insignificant, at least until we are the one who we feel has been treated unjustly.

Let us plead for the mercy to praise the One from whom all blessings flow, for, in reality, our blessings are most often the very things we count as our miseries, not the other way around.

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