Taking It For Granted

Last Sunday was the 15th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center.  In the aftermath of the attacks, there was a tremendous outpouring of patriotism.  The country was united in a way that I don’t remember it ever having been united before.  Maybe it was back during World War II or something--I’m not old enough to remember that.  But in my life, this was the most united the country had ever been.

The unity did not last, of course.  We certainly don’t have it now.  That does not mean that it was phony, though.  Nor does it mean that it was irrelevant.  That unity was real, and I think it happened for reasons.

I think at least one of the reason we felt unified was that people realized, many for the first time, just how important our country is to them.  People also realized, many for the first time, just how precious our freedom is.  And most of all, people realized, many for the first time, that the fact that we’ve always known freedom does not mean that we always will.  Our freedom can be lost, and there are people who would like to take it from us.

There are a lot of things like that in life, things that we take for granted, things that we don’t realize the importance of until we realize we might lose them.  It can be things we can enjoy doing.  It can be good health.  It can be our families or our friends.  It can even be our relationship with God.

A lot of us, including me, have had times when we take our relationship with God for granted.  We know God loves us, we know God will forgive us, and so we just assume that God will be there for us and take care of us no matter what.  Because of that, we stop spending time with God.  We stop spending time in prayer.  We stop reading the Bible.  And when we actually do those things, we do them in kind of a perfunctory way, without really thinking about what we’re doing or allowing it to have an impact on our lives.

God does love us, of course.  And God will forgive us, if we repent and sincerely ask for forgiveness.  And God will always be there for us.  But we cannot just assume that God will take care of us if we take God for granted.  God wants to help us, but God waits to be asked.  If we choose to ignore God and go our own way, God will allow us to do that.  And God will allow us to deal with the consequences.

It’s never good to take things for granted.  It’s especially not good to take God or the blessings God gives us for granted.  Let’s keep our relationship with God strong and let’s take the time, every day, to thank God for all the blessings God gives us.