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The World of Prayer V: Thankfulness.

Saturday, July 11, 2009. A world of prayer - for one week we want to focus on prayer. Today we come to “prayer of thankfulness”.

Where do the things come from which we use every day? Of course usually we work. We get paid for our work, and then we buy what we need from the money we earn for our work. That provides us with housing, with garment, with food and something to drink. So often we think that we earned what we have. We believe that what we have is our award for the hard work we do. But is that really reality? Is this a good view into the facts?

We all have a human body which is absolutely fantastic. We all grow up as babies and children without working. We are fed and nurtured by parents and further people around us. Then we attend school, we learn a lot, we are educated and equipped with various capabilities. Most of them we do not earn. Yes, we need to put effort into learning. But the effort is more the last 10% of what is needed to enable us to learn. We are equipped with a flexible mind, with the natural ability to pick up things, to learn to walk, to learn language, to learn to perform various complex tasks.

Let us talk about work again. We carry out our work in a particular social environment. This environment is much more important for the effects of our work than we believe. There are millions of people on this planet who work hard as well, but they do not get much out of it. It is taken away by inefficient and corrupt social systems. It is destroyed by draughts and natural catastrophes. We cannot control the outcome of our work. The success is given to us, or it is not given to us. Many things in our life are beyond our possibilities of control.

We should be thankful for everything we have. Thankfulness is one of the key roads to realism. Thankfulness acknowledges that all we have is given to us, we can put some work into things, but we cannot really earn anything. Thankfulness is one of the fruits of the holy spirit. It shows deeper insight into the world, into reality. When we realize that God has created everything, that he has made a world in which we are in principle given all we need, then we start to become thankful. Of course, the world has many problems. It is not the world God wanted, it is not the Garden of Eden any more. It is a tough world, with wars and fights, with struggle on various levels. But still, it has kept some spirit of its origin and its future will be a future where God is taking back what was his from the beginning.

Every day we say prayers of thankfulness in our family, with our children. We thank God for the beds we have, that we can lay down and sleep in peace. We thank him for the food we have, for the apple juice and water. We thank God for the roof, that we are dry and warm in our house. We thank him that we have schools, that we can learn to read, to explore the adventure of mankind, culture and people here and everywhere. We thank him for the friends we have, for our family, we thank him for parents and many people around us which are a great gift and blessing to us. There are so many things we are thankful about. We thank God that we got to know him, that he is so amazing, patient with us, full of grace and living a humility which is motivating every day again. He is really great, and there is a flow of light coming from his throne into our lives which is too fantastic to comprehend or to describe. What else can we say than one word: thanks, thanks! ... more texts

jn_en_2009_07_11.txt · Last modified: 2017/06/18 16:48 by 127.0.0.1