Sunday morning on Mother’s Day, I was having a bad morning, feeling pretty sorry for myself and discussing the situation with God. I got dressed and headed out in the churches big sixteen-passenger 1996 Dodge van which the kids and I refer to as “The Big Green Machine” to pick up the kids on my bus route. As I was getting into the van, my neighbor yelled, “hello” to me, so I stopped and talked briefly then told him that I had better get going.
As I was getting into the van, I said, “I love to drive this—it’s my favorite thing to do”. He looked at me blankly—I said, “I’m kidding”. He said, “I wasn’t sure”. I thought—what in the world about my personality would cause someone to think that I could possibly not be kidding—I must be really weird.
As I was driving, I ran into a couple of other church vans and waved at the people driving—as is customary for those of us in the elite Sunday-morning van driving club to do, I had the Wind FM playing and was trying to get in a more worshipful mood, but it wasn’t really working. I told the Holy Spirit that He was going to have to take over because my flesh was interfering with His “Godly” plans and if I was going to minister in any way in children’s church, He was going to have to arise to the occasion or we were sunk.
I got to church and had to go straight in to the computer to put the words of the songs we were going to sing that day into EasyWorship and once again felt sorry for myself because the computer had crashed a couple of weeks before and all of my song library had been lost—every song had to be re-entered into the computer.
I began putting in the words to “Awesome God”. I had to listen to the song and then stop and type in the words, so I had to listen really close. The arrangement was an arrangement for children’s worship and there were readings of scripture by kids about the awesomeness of God interspersed in the song. I started thinking of the awesomeness of God and how often we fail to recognize His greatness—how often we fail to give Him the thanks that is due Him. He has a pretty “thankless” job. I listened as the kid's expressed worship and I just stopped typing and listened to the song.
I went to my concordance and counted the number of times that the Bible mentions to give thanks and it was twenty-five. Twenty-five times—at least, God instructs me to give thanks. I know that we pick and choose the things that we decide to be obedient about, but giving thanks should be a priority.
God is always working in invisible ways to accomplish his good purpose in all of our lives. He is always at work around us to draw men to Him and sometimes we fail to be attentive because our eyes can only see what is going on in front of our noses. Our personal circumstances and struggles keep us from looking up to see the greatness of God and hinder our ability to obey in giving thanks. As Paul says, “my brothers (and sisters), these things should not be”.
Psalm 121—I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over Israel will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel
I asked God to help me and He did—He showed up and spoke His truth to me in the midst of my despair and saved the day. I’m not sure why I was surprised—that’s what He does when we ask and seek.
I don’t want to have any part in God having a “thankless” job. I want to appreciate and be involved in seeing the minuscule ways that He is showing His love for me. I want to be able to get my nose out of my problems and look to “where my help comes from”. I am going to try to do that today and hopefully tomorrow too—I know that my nose will get stuck again, but I’m going to keep trying to give thanks to God because He is good and His love does endure forever.
I truely enjoy your Blog and it sure steps on my toes...I love and appreciate you...this story reminds me of all those early Sat mornings we spend visiting with and enviting the kids and their families to church....
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