June 4th, 2022: Taking God's Blessings for Granted

It is a quiet morning in Southern Manitoba. This area is one of the richest farmland in Canada. The soil is fertile, and farmer can grow their crops here. Sometimes I think we have taken many things for granted by being in such a wealthy country.

Taking things for granted tends to lead to exploitation. We somehow believe that it is all about us. We might even consider many of God's blessings as our privileges. We lose the ability to appreciate how God desires to work with us in reaching out to others. The root cause for much of human suffering is our inability to work with God in sharing with others. We end up using God's blessings to dehumanize one another and destroy whatever is good.

Taking things for granted makes our hearts callous and ungrateful. We lose the ability to see the world and its suffering through the lens of God. Our view of the world and who we are gets corrupted. We are unable to be free from our own narrow and unattractive view of life. We then lose the power of living for God in this world. Life becomes very trivial as we try our best to gather our earthy possession so that we can die one day with eternal emptiness.

Taking things for granted will also put our hearts in decay. We have no freedom to feel the joy of caring for others. We become protective of what we have and jealous of what we do not have. Our hearts show contempt towards God.

Ephesians 3: 16

"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,"