Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Taking Health for Granted

I remember a great definition of maturity.  Maturity is realizing that the most important lessons in life are the ones we thought we already knew.  Don't you love that?  Most of us know how to live rightly according to God's desires for us.  But we are a people who forget easily.  We need to relearn the same basic lessons over and over again.  Mature people are those who for the most part have learned those lessons and remember them.

I am at the end of a 10 day bout of severe sore throat and coughing spasms.  I am sure that before this spell I was not as aware of how good life can be without a sore throat and the wracking pain of deep coughing.  But during the past 10 days I have thought a lot about life without this pain.  It leads me to think about all the blessings of life without pain.  How I take them for granted. 

This is an important part of our prayer life:  simply being still in gratitude to God for simple things like a pain-free body, eyes to see, arms to hug loved ones, legs to hike trails, etc.  When something like our health is compromised or taken from us we immediately understand what we had.  The challenge of a life of faith today is to thank God for all the gifts of life and love.  They may not always be with us.

Grace Always,
Dave

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