Gratitude

Today marked day one of an initiative our church is participating in called the Matthew 25 challenge, you can find more details about the challenge here, but in short, the challenge is a call for the Church to grow in its concern for the least and lacking in this world. The challenge is rooted in Jesus’ unsettling words in the close of the tax collector, Matthew’s, account of Jesus’ words and deeds. I preached on the passage Sunday, February 27, and if you are interested, you can watch it on YouTube. It may have been one of the most important messages of my life. 

Why I am writing this post is related, but not entirely. It is more personal… confessional. As I participated in the first challenge today—which was to miss a meal—I found myself irritable, short on patience and inattentive. I had trouble staying focused in meetings today. It was a little embarrassing how quickly some of my entitlement surfaced. 

I was a bit shocked at all of the emotions I was experiencing because we Fast as a church twice a year. Why did today feel so different? 

Add to my own varying emotions and reactions my children asking for food on the hour from the moment they arrived home until we finally broke the Fast together as a family. I found myself so irritable with their insistence on eating… and then I just… broke. 

Suddenly I had this image in my mind of a mother in the realm of our global village that lives on less than $1.90 a day. I wondered what it must be like for her to be hungry and unsure of when she might eat again and, at the same time, carry a concern for a child. What emotions must she feel when she knows the answer will likely be that there is little or nothing to eat? What must she feel when she finds or purchases food, knowing that there is a significant chance she will not eat.

The emotions must, at times or always, be overwhelming—even crushing. 

As I pondered all of these things in my heart, I was suddenly filled with a sense of overwhelming gratitude. God has given me more than I ever imagined I would materially steward. He has trusted more to the nation I call home than He has entrusted to many others. And what do most of us do with it, even those of us who say we follow the way of Jesus? We hoard. We spend. We act as owners instead of managers. We live with very little gratitude. 

Today I am determined to live life grateful for the mundane as much as the extravagant. I will be grateful for my ice because even the things I do not have do not place me on the plane of those living on less than the cost of a cup of coffee. 

I will be grateful. Will you?