Man likes to thank God but with a drop of ego. Man is more fulfilled if he played a role or two in what he’s thanking God for.
Michael Bush
From time to time, especially every annual dawn, human beings (black or white, big or small, rich or poor, male or female) take stock. Most often than not, attention is paid only to areas that we should have performed, received or been treated better. Only a handful of people take stock with a view to giving thanks to the Creator. Many of those who wonder why they should give thanks focus only on either the smallness of their God or the bigness of their problems!
2019 poll: Why God sent me to Atiku as his candidate (3)
That is odd, right? Right, and I can break it down with five proofs that man’s gratitude to God is not that deep. One, we forget so conveniently. It will be impossible to stay as unthankfully-ungrateful to God as you and I have been if we remembered just one percent of his stupendous goodness: the secret battles he fights for us; the undeserved victories he grants us; the unlimited provisions his grace makes possible and available.
Two, who treasures what was not paid for? Yes, that’s a huge part of the problem. Human beings receive far too much and pay for far too little. Have you ever wondered why life is cheaper than a secondhand car?
Or why we roll out the drums to perform thanksgiving for a new car or a successful graduation but ignore the very oxygen that is the real lifeblood? Both puzzles can be unlocked by one answer: Value is in the price tag! Man likes to thank God but with a drop of ego. Man is more fulfilled if he played a role or two in what he’s thanking God for.
Three, we take too much for granted. Yet, we can’t blame us. Because nature simplified those privileges, we have come to see them as rights. Why should I be thankful that as a baby, I had no trouble crawling then walking, when ninety nine point nine nine per cent of babies enjoy that too?
Why should anyone waste time to appreciate God for accident-free trips to and from work, schools, errands, business, holidays, visits, etc. when accidents don’t happen everyday? How are we to know it’s only by his grace and mercy that we have not been maimed or consumed when everyone else journeys about unhurt? Which person ever appreciates general mercy or favour? Who among us doesn’t know we all want to be the only cock to crow?
Let’s make progress by going to four. No one ever has praise points; just prayer points. Much of those prayer points are requests upon requests. The eternal insatiability that our DNA is wired with ensures that all human beings are concerned about the next request which changes per God’s performance.
Today, we appear before God looking all meek and sorrowful; blackmailing him in the process with how badly we need a house. Tomorrow, he grants that. We mutter our thanks but, that gratitude is short-lived, because the very next day, we are back with a long face and a bent neck, crying for a car. Woe betide God if the car doesn’t arrive as quickly as we need it!
Five, our sense of self-entitlement is demonic. Human beings are as spoiled as ‘aje bota’ children. What I don’t know and cannot say for sure is who spoiled them: God or themselves?
We desire far too much. We overreach ourselves far too much. We overprice our importance fr too much. We arrogate far too much (rights, abilities, name them) to ourselves.
We think we know better than our Creator what’s good for us. That silly pride or empty ignorance beclouds our appreciation of and relationship with God! That’s why and how far too many people have dug a pit and set a trap for themselves. There are far too many examples of these pits and traps swallowing up the same people who brought them about.
Alas, being thankful is better than praying and fasting. Well, perhaps the last Line should be contrived a little less harshly. People need to rethink the way we have made God so small in our eyes and heart. A little more effort in the direction of gratitude can do far too much for us in our relationship with God.
The bible is replete with Old and New Testament evidence that permanent thanksgivers belong in another realm all by themselves and with no good second. Even present-day experience has proved beyond all reasonable doubt that being perpetually grateful to God is better than sacrificing, praying and fasting; put together. It is true that prayer is the key – according to the songwriter. But, the truer truth is that thanksgiving is the master-key.
Let us develop the spirit of being always in the mode of thank you. Let it become a lifestyle, let it show in our speech and conduct. It moves God most and fastest. God bless humanity!
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Akwa Ibom 2019 is a clearcut election
Weeks to the next governorship ballot in the south south state of Akwa Ibom, very little electioneering is on display. Only noise of ego and hate has assumed deafening decibels. That’s in character, because in this country we are used to going for the leg rather than the ball.
Fortunately though, the masses who seem to have been hit by a new wave of realism, are rethinking, reassessing, re-strategising, realigning and reevaluating. These voters are asking what the frontrunners have ever done for the state. Gov. Udom Gabriel Emmanuel of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is being challenged by Managing Director of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Obong Nsima Ekere of All Progressives Congress (APC) and a truckload of other standard bearers.
This is expo, really. Akwa Ibom people are not interested in stories. We want first to hear the candidates articulate what they did before for us and how they did it!