Monday, June 4, 2012

WHAT AN AMAZING LIFE!


Carol and I enjoy watching documentaries about different countries. With today's amazing photography, it's almost as good as being there. We recently watched "Wild China," a fine series live-streamed into our home via Netflix. We've also enjoyed watching other series that show us about the amazing world we live in. 

And we can do it so easily. Just punch a button or two on a small remote control, wait a few moments, and here comes the show. We watch it on a modern flat-screen TV, sitting on easy chairs in a comfortable home in such a lush and green time of year.

How fortunate we are to be living in a free country with plenty of food and water during this amazing time of history. We could easily have been born a couple of hundred years ago, on the barren Steppes of China, or with our mother wearing a burka, or trying to raise our family in a drug-ridden town in Mexico.

We can now take an Icelandic Air non-stop flight to Reykjavik for about the price of of good set of tires. If I don't feel well, there are a dozen places to get excellent medical care within a half hour of our home. The news tells me if I have a few spare million dollars, in a few years I will probably be able take a space flight, even at my age.

We have no control where, when or to whom we are born. The fact that we have been born at this time, in this place, with these privileges and rich blessings ought to make us fall on our knees every day and give God thanks. Instead, we'll probably get angry at Washington politicians, worry about our loved ones or grumble about our aches and pains.

I think most every one of us ought to consider writing God a long letter of thanks that we are alive today. Your life may not be quite what you want it to be, but you are alive, and that makes you richly blessed. Many people who lived just a century ago would have given all they had to live the life we have lived.

Instead of disappointment over what we don't have, let's be grateful for what we do. The poorest American is richer than 75% of the rest of the world. A Christian child has more blessings to come than a child born into a Buddhist or Hindu or Moslem family. 

"O give thanks to the Lord for He is good. His love endures forever." (Psalm 136:1)

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