By the Way: Discontent vs Thankfulness
By Lila de Waal on June 29, 2019.
When I first came to Medicine Hat, I was impressed by how clean and neat this city was. I especially loved the beautiful flower beds and stretches of green grass that we have throughout the city. But as I read the paper, I learned that many Hatters like to complain; why aren’t there flowers in their neighbourhood? Why isn’t there irrigated grass at the entrance to their street? Even though our city is very beautiful, Hatters would like it to be more beautiful. Somehow, in the middle of this lovely city there was still discontent. After I had been living here for a while I noticed some of this discontent rubbing off on me. found myself complaining to my husband, “Why do they pull up the flowers in the fall before the frost comes?” I guess I was becoming a Hatter. Instead of being thankful that the flower beds were cleaned up so neatly in the fall, I had begun to complain. We are often this way towards God too. We become angry with God because someone we love has died, instead of being thankful for the life they had. We complain to God about the things we cannot do, instead of being thankful for the things we can do. We are discontented with our life because we see that someone else has an opportunity that we do not have. The Bible is full of reminders to be thankful. – “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good! – His faithful love endures forever.” Psalm 136:1 nlt For some reason we all need to be reminded to be thankful. It seems to be a skill we have to develop. We can live in discontent or we can train ourselves to be thankful. Even when everything seems to be going wrong, we can be thankful that God loves us and never forgets us. This summer brings to a close 10 years of ministry here in Medicine Hat. I am thankful to God for the opportunity to live in this beautiful city and be a servant of Jesus in this place among people that he loves. Lila de Waal is diaconal minister at Victory Lutheran Church. 10-9
