Yesterday I Was Reminded Just How Much I Take Things For Granted

Yesterday I was reminded just how much I take things for granted. And how easy it is to feel sorry for yourself. And how we need God to remind us just how blessed we truly are.

Kellie, the kids, and I began our day with one car in our two car garage. Not because one side of the garage is loaded with stuff (it’s actually clean!), but because my 2005 PT Cruiser was in the auto shop for repairs. For the second time in three weeks. 😦

Then… when I woke up I realized our house was colder than it should have been. So I went downstairs and the furnace wasn’t sounding right. Visions of spending several thousand dollars on a new furnace began to swirl in my mind. We called Consumers Energy and they couldn’t promise a repair person would be out before 11pm that night.

A day without heat. Joy!

A few hours later we realized our stove wasn’t working… and then we discovered we had no hot water… and then Kellie did a load of clothes but our dryer wouldn’t fire up.

No heat. No stove. No hot water. No dryer.

Let the pity party begin! 🙂

Sidenote: I soon realized all of our appliances couldn’t be going bad on the same day. It was a gas problem. Consumers Energy came out, replaced our gas meter on the outside of our house, and life was back to normal. We had heat and everything else by 5pm.

I don’t remember when it began to happen, but throughout the day yesterday God began to gently remind me just how good we have it. He gave me a reality check. Here’s part of it…

• Today I’ll be driving Kellie’s minivan to a Vineyard pastor’s meeting in Lansing since my car is still in the shop. As I drive down Van Dyke in our second vehicle, I am going to pass by a dozen people at various bus stops waiting to catch a bus so they can get to work or school. People who don’t own one car, let alone two.

• We didn’t have heat for about 10 hours. But we still had an insulated home to stay in. What about the folks who went to bed last night under an overpass who have neither?

• We couldn’t do a load of laundry for a day. For some folks the laundromat is the only option every single day because they can’t afford to own a dryer.

• I took a lukewarm shower yesterday. But at least I had a shower.

• Kellie wasn’t able to cook mac & cheese on the stove for Faith to bring to school yesterday for lunch. So she simply went into our pantry and picked out something else. We know there are kids at Faith’s school that are only able to eat lunch because the school provides it. There is no option for them between mac & cheese or something else. Because there isn’t any food in the pantry.

Instead of focusing on the ways God has blessed us, we focus on ways He has not blessed us. In that way, we are like a 4-year-old who is blessed with a the day at the zoo seeing zebras and camels and polar bears but then has a meltdown because they didn’t get to see the tigers.

You are blessed. I am blessed. May we count our blessings today.

***Please join us this Sunday at The Eastside Vineyard Church. My sermon will focus on Matthew 27 where Jesus stands before Pilate as the crowd shouts “Crucify Him!” Just like I preached on last week… there is much more going on than meets the eye. We need to focus on the spiritual realm to really understand the bigger picture of this text. Bring your thinking caps! And be sure to “fall back” on Saturday night so you don’t show up an hour late for church! November 3rd. 10:30am (EST). More info at tevchurch.org***