I know that too many today live in an age of entitlement where everything is expected to happen in life without much effort or at the expense of another for free. I have memories of friends in high school who got their first car as they turned 16. I don’t have any memories of my parents making any such promises to me or my brothers. One of the most valuable lessons in life is to actually earn through your own work efforts that first car or fancy iPhone. (Notice that the present-day cost of an iPhone almost equals what I paid for my first new car.)
One of the more amazing aspects of my life is being someone who often becomes a conduit of someone else’s generosity. Over the Thanksgiving long-weekend I had many phone calls and text messages of many who were blessed to receive a Thanksgiving meal basket from one of my partner churches. What does surprise me is why I didn’t get a quick text from everyone saying thanks. I can remember one of Jesus’ days, when he chooses to heal 10 lepers whose lives had been marginal at best. Yet, only one of the healed lepers turned around to thank him. How is that possible?
I’m always taken back by the few adults who don’t understand the importance of showing thanks and asking with gratitude instead of almost demanding. I had one mom who asked for help at Thanksgiving in a way that touched my heart. I had another mom that seemed to demand that I owed her a Thanksgiving Basket. The difficulty for me is that I don’t have unlimited resources, so I do have to say no to many. I know that life isn’t fair and that at times those who are less deserving receive help that someone else should have received. Yet, often the deciding factor in helping someone does come back to their ability to say PLEASE and THANK YOU.
I do understand that expressing thanks is a by-product of how you were raised and the examples of those around you. So, if you are born into a family, like I was, my mom taught me from the cradle that saying thank you was a necessary response to everything that I received. I was shown by example that having an attitude of gratitude would go a long way, especially when I messed up and didn’t always remember. The downside to my mom’s life philosophy was when I or others forgot to say thanks there would be consequences. I have memories of my mom being quick to chide some of my kids when they didn’t express thanks.
I know that having a mindset that everything in life is a gift from God is so essential to having an attitude of gratitude. Yet, too many have this contrary mindset that everything they have in life is theirs because they earned it. So, why should I have to show thankfulness when I’m the one who did everything? I will always remember the gift of a special friend to a teen who was graduating from High School. She went out of her way to have a friend do incredible pictures for the graduation. When I asked the recent grad if she had thanked our mutual friend the following came out of her mouth, ‘Why should I have to say thanks because I didn’t ask her to do this for me?’ As you can imagine I was horrified with this response and couldn’t believe I actually heard this.
As we approach Christmas and other religious holidays that are all about receiving from the One who is the ultimate gift giver, my hope would be that please and thank you would make a ‘come back’! The opportunity that each of us have each day is to not allow the ‘Grinch’ types to steal our joy when it comes to giving without any sense of who is worthy to receive.
I know that I most likely would be one of the 9 lepers that would have chosen purposely not to have thanked Jesus. I could have mentally made the assessment that this Jesus wouldn’t have had any clue about what life would have been like as someone that was hated, despised and ostracized. I deserved to be made whole and the bigger picture I would have thought was that God was the one who had cursed me with this deadly disease.
Please take the time and effort to say please, thank you and show an attitude of gratitude today and touch another person’s life as you change the world!
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