God's Patience and Grace

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     I passed a sign out in front of the Seventh Day Adventist church near our home the other day.  It says, "To Whom Do We Owe Thanks?"  Normally, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to church signs, but this one got me to thinking.  We talk about this time of year that we have a lot to be thankful for or at least some of us do.  But, sometimes we neglect to say to "whom" we owe our thanks.  More than that even, we sometimes are only talking about the temporary things of this world instead of things like eternal life.

      The longer I am a christian, the more amazed I am by the grace and patience of God.  I am amazed that God puts up with how slow I am to respond to him and to learn lessons of grace.  Not only that, but how many times I go backwards instead of forwards.  It is amazing that God forgives us, even the best of us.  It is amazing that he wants to have a relationship with us all. 

In working in mental health, I have some clients that I get along with and personally like more than others.  You can't and shouldn't play favorites and that doesn't mean that I do, but there are naturally some people whose personalities are kinder and easier to get along with.  Others, to be blunt, have made me a little reluctant to even work with them because they seem so self-destructive or dysfunctional.  I think to myself that there is nothing that I can do and nothing is going to help.  It makes you want to give up sometimes though you can't.  I wonder sometimes if God feels the same way about me?  Multiplied times 1,000.  Because he can see the heart and not just the exterior and see how black it is without the blood of Christ.

So, this thanksgiving, I am grateful for a lot of things.  I am grateful for a wife who puts up with me and two good kids.  I am thankful for my job and for the things that I have.  I am thankful for those I call my friends.  I am thankful for a lot, but most of all I am thankful for a gracious and merciful God who doesn't give up on me.

"It is good to give thanks to the Lord. And to sing praises to Thy name, O Most High; To declar Thy lovingkindness in the morning, And Thy faithfulness by night," Psalm 92:1-2

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