Where is your 'thank you'?

Seeing people praying to God in any occasion brings joy to my heart. Not once I felt so blessed seeing someone praying before taking meals in coffees shops and restaurants.

I happened to be in one of the coffee shop in my town one evening. I saw this group of three young waiters were about to have their dinner. Two of them began eating straight away after sitting down but the other one calmly sat down and closed his eyes and bowed his head down to pray. It was not a long prayer, just half a minute I guess but its effect on me was so great. I felt a sudden and big joy inside me seeing that guy thanking God for His blessing

Giving thanks to God sometimes become the hardest thing to do. In many occasions we will only remember to thank Him when the blessing is great and we feel happy about it. But when the blessing is small in nature we always forget to thank Him ( or we just ignore it because we are not really happy about it). That is why we forget to pray prior to having our meal, before retiring to bed at night, when we wake up in the morning and in many other ordinary occasions. We forget that if not because of God, we will never be able to have even the simplest meal for dinner as those in some countries in Africa, we will never be able to have even an hour to rest and sleep at night as experienced by the victims of the Nargis Typhoon in Bangladesh and earthquake in China or seeing the beautiful sunrise in the morning.

When the blessings are huge and satisfying, we will straight away say "Thank God for this!!!". When we got promoted, we held thanks giving party. But when we were at the same position for 10 years, how many time we thank God for His generosity and blessings for allowing us to survive the 10-years with good health? How many time we thank Him for giving us job that we love and enjoy even without being promoted for 10 years?

Being thankful to God in all situation is the key for happiness. It is not easy to say thank you when we are in the midst of a big crisis, but it is also not hard to say 'help me'. One of the reason for crisis to happen in our life is that we do not ask God for help. How can we expect Him to help if we never ask? But how can we expect Him to keep on helping us if we never say 'thank you'? When Jesus healed the ten lepers, how many came back to thank Him? Only one..only ten percent...same goes to our world today. Perhaps only ten percent of the world have ever came to God and thank Him for His great works in man's life... are we the ten percent?

Shining even in the rain

In Missouri, warm summer evenings offer a special treat. As darkness falls, lawns are covered by the soft, twinkling lights of fireflies. Children love to catch the fireflies and put them into jars to create their own special lanterns.

While I walked home at dusk one hot summer evening with my five-year-old grandson, Zach, a gentle rain began to fall. He questioned, "Grandpa, can fireflies shine in the rain?" I started to say that fireflies don't come out in the rain when suddenly all around us little lights started twinkling. To my amazement, the fireflies were out in large number, rising up from the lawn. Fireflies can shine in the rain!

In a similar way, God's light is stronger than problems that rain upon us. If we follow the light of Christ as God reveals it in the Bible, we can find hope even as we walk in the rain. Like many others, I have endured problems such as divorce, illness, unemployment, and family conflict. In these disappointments, we need not stumble into self-pity, anger, or pessimism. God will bless us with light as we follow Christ; we can shine even in the rain.

Cliff Rawley (Missouri, U.S.A.)

The light of God would never fade even in the heaviest rain. It will keep on shining on us, showing us which way to go. So it is therefore important to remain in God's light to be able to clearly see things ahead of us. Trials of all kinds may rain upon us but we should never be afraid and worry for God's light is far greater than the rain.......