How often do we go through things just following the motions? I take for granted that my phone and my computer will work when I turn them on. I trust that my food will be cold in the refrigerator and cooked when I take it out of the over. I trust that when my traffic light turns green, yours will turn red, and I will be able to safely get out of the intersection.
But what if things didn't work out like that. Chaos ensues. We flush the toilet and instead of eliminating our waste, it overflows from the top. Traffic lights malfunction and there is bedlam on the streets. A switch doesn't work on the train tracks and thousands of lives are thrown out of kilter.
This means we should be thankful that 99% of the time these things work perfectly. I should offer thanksgiving that my morning orange juice is cold when I open up the fridge almost all of the time. But human beings are funny. We only remember the one day in six months when something doesn't work. That day becomes a disaster. We ignore the hundreds of other times when all was great.
Giving thanks. I think it is really hard when everything goes well for a very long time. When life is going along perfectly, quite quickly we become accustomed to that perfection. We assume that life should always be smooth. If I have never worried about whether the water I drink is free from dangerous pathogens, if I have never worried about where my next meal is coming from, if I have never had to be concerned about where I will sleep tonight, then it becomes easy for us to think that there will always be food, water, and shelter. We just assume that those things are a given.
But if one has been starving for a long time, imagine how grateful they must feel when they get a decent meal. If one has been unemployed for many years, imagine how wonderful it must feel to get a secure job. People who have been born with everything, lose it for whatever reason, then get rich again, also have a greater appreciation for what they have. But I think as soon as one begins to expect again that their plates will be full every night and that they will be in their own king size bed in their own place each night, we begin to forget to say thank you.
What I am trying to say is that all of us have much to be thankful for each day. During the average day, my heart beats over 100,000 times. Over 24 hours, I breathe thousands of times. It is impossible to say thank you for each of these miracles. During the average day, I will consume 8700 kilojoules of food. It is next to impossible to offer gratitude for each morsel. We need to take moments to say thank you. We need to recognise that so many times we forget to say thanks for that unfortunately is part of human nature. But we need to try ever harder to express appreciation for all that we have. Blessings
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