From the Miraculous to the Mundane

This week I read 1 Chronicles. Have you read 1Chronicles lately? The first nine chapters are geneologies. Yes that's right NINE chapters of geneologies. Talking about boring and mundane. Yet as I read through them the Holy Spirit reminded me that all the names I was reading were the result of a miracle.

You see God made a promise to Abram that he would have descendants like the stars in the sea and that these descendants would come through his wife Sarai, who was then old and past childbearing. The idea was so inconcevable that Sarai laughed. Yet, one year later Sarai (now called Sarah) gave birth to a son and named his Isaac. It was a miracle!

Yet just a few hundred years later the miracle had turned mundane. Just a long list of names that seems to go on and on. What a sad commentary this is on our human nature. We so quickly forget the miraculous.

I have two wonderful children who are truly miracles to God for us. After 11 years of battling infertility God gave us these two children in two year, the first one without any work on our part whatsoever. We did not register with an agency, talk to a lawyer, talk to friends. Nothing! It was a miracle. On a daily basis, however, things feel more mundane than they do miraculous. Why?

How do we move from that wonderful feeling of "THANK YOU GOD. YOU ARE SO AWESOME. YOU ARE SO GREAT. YOU HAVE DONE GREAT THINGS FOR ME," to, "What would make you want to poke all our leader furniture with a knife? Why do you say such mean things to your grandmother? WHY ARE THESE KIDS SO OUR OF CONTROL? etc, etc, etc?" What makes us move from the miraculous to the mundane? I think its a lack of thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is the practice of saying THANK YOU to God. Its the practice of being grateful. When we are grateful we remember how good God has been to us, because we place our focus on his goodness. Complaining is the direct opposite of gratitude. It makes our lives feel mundane. Giving thanks reminds us that our lives are actually full of miracles!