Sunday, June 21, 2015

GRUMBLE OR GRATITUDE

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"Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation.”  Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. (Philippians 2:14-16)

     The following was an email that made the rounds just after 9/11. 

It was called, “What a Difference a Day Makes."

On Monday, we e-mailed jokes.

On Tuesday, we did not.

On Monday, we were fussing about praying in school.

On Tuesday, we would have been hard pressed to find a school where someone was not praying.

On Monday, our heroes were athletes.

On Tuesday, we relearned who heroes are.

On Monday, there were people trying to separate us by race, sex, color, and creed.

On Tuesday, we were all holding hands.

On Monday, we were irritated that our rebate checks had not arrived.

On Tuesday, we gave money away gladly to people we had never met.

On Monday, we were upset that we had to wait 5 minutes in a fast food line.

On Tuesday, we stood in line for 3 to 5 hours to give blood for the dying.

On Monday, we argued with our kids to clean up their rooms.

On Tuesday, we couldn’t get home fast enough to hug our kids.

On Monday, we went to work as usual.

On Tuesday, we went to work, but some of us didn’t come home.

On Monday, we had families.

On Tuesday, we had orphans.

On Monday, September 10th, life felt routine.

On Tuesday, September 11th, it did not.

What a difference a day makes.

If we monitored your conversations numbered your moments of giving thanks against your complaining, nagging, grumbling moments which would have the greater number?

We all have had reasons in our life to grumble and complain about something.  The question is… how often do we yield to the temptation?  

     And how much good does the grumbling do?

A single shot complaint is acceptable.  We’re human and it is good to get it out of our system.  But a machinegun affect that goes on and on and on is unacceptable.

Jesus was crucified because grumbling had taken over the conversations of the high priests. 

They grumbled about what He was doing, what he wasn’t doing, where he spent his time and with whom, and what He was saying.  

Finally, grumbling so took over their thinking that compassion went out the window and they were downright nasty when it came to decision time. 

 But then that is the way it always works. 

You won’t find very many nice people who are also grumblers. 

They grimace and they shout and they gossip and they fret and they turn committee meetings into utter disaster meetings, and they upset churches and corporations and homes.

 They are an ongoing pain in the neck that keeps life messy and miserable for themselves and everyone around them.

The Apostle Paul was good at poking holes at human frailties…and what he saw taking place in the church at Philippi displeased him no small amount. 

Complaining and complaining and complaining some more.  Disruptive, disturbing, destructive.  True then…true now. 

He probably knew that churches in the future, even unto the 21st century, would still be practicing this monstrosity of the soul…and so, seeing the fault he went after it and wrote,    “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe” (Phil 2:14)  

Listen to this little incident.

A man had considered joining a certain monastery for a long time but when he finally looked into the matter he was somewhat taken back when he learned that to join he had to accept their rule that he could only say two words a year; and that at the end of each year. 

But he really wanted to join the monastery, so he acquiesced.

At the end of the first year he appeared before the Head Monk and spoke his two words, “Food’s bad.”

Another year passed and again he stood before the Head Monk.  He spoke his two-word allotment a second time, “Bed’s hard.”

A third year came to an end and as he stood before the Head Monk, he said, “I quit.”

“Doesn’t surprise me at all,” said the Head Monk, “All you’ve done since you got here is complain.”

TO BE CONTINUED
 
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