“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever” I Chronicles 16:34 (NIV).
The other day I overheard our middle and youngest having a conversation. I wasn’t really tuning in to their words until I heard our daughter tell our littlest, “We don’t say we’re lucky. There’s no such thing as luck. We’re blessed.” Later that night, our youngest was settling down to sleep, having a conversation with himself aloud. He started to say something about being lucky, stopped himself, and goes, “Oops, I mean I’m blessed,” and continued on without missing a beat.
That may seem silly to some that our family would have a hang up about using the word “luck” versus blessed, but it’s significant to us. You see, we know that all good things come from God. It’s not because we’re just lucky or happenstance or chance. It’s my prayer that whenever something good happens throughout the day, we automatically give God all the praise and glory. I used to get upset when I thought God wanted us to sit around worshipping Him all the time. I thought, here He calls us to be humble but yet all that He does, He does for His glory, to show off His power. That seemed hypocritical to me. That is, until I really thought about what message He’s sending and why.
First of all, it’s pretty bold (and incredibly wrong) of me to sit and tell the God who created everything that He’s not important enough to be praised, worshipped, and glorified. I can’t even make dinner successfully once a week without something going wrong. He made everything and so yes, He deserves the glory and praise if He wants it, for whatever reason.
However, the more I dove into the Scriptures, the more I realized the reasoning behind His wanting everything to point back to Him. It’s not as much for Him to be praised and adored in a conceited way – Satan has that arena covered. It’s because He knows that the only way He can have all His children join Him in Heaven for eternity is to point us toward Jesus and a desire to have a relationship with His only Son. When we accept that we need God in every aspect of our lives and we invite Him into our hearts in a genuine relationship with Him, then and only then will we have the privilege of spending eternity with God in His house. And, the best way for people to crave a relationship with the God of the universe is to see how much they need Him and how willing He is to protect, love, embrace, and cherish them.
So, when looked at that way, it means even more to me to have our children embrace the concept that good things don’t happen to us in life because of luck. No, when blessings shower down, it’s because God chose to give us those blessings and my Heavenly Father deserves all the credit for those blessings. I don’t want to have to stand before Him, when my life is over and I’m spending eternity in His house and have to explain why I neglected to say “thank you.” Especially when He has blessed me with so much.
© 2013 Cheri Swalwell