Too often we get in the mind frame of "nobody understands what I am going going through and I have it harder than anybody else". We complain at every little ache and pain or bump in the road of life, If we don't get the promotion we wanted it is because the person who got it is a bottom kisser or a politician or even he or she has done "favors" for the boss. If something does not go exactly like we want it to we often complain or call the manager and belittle the person who made a mistake or speak to the manager rudely to the point of being belligerent. Even after a apology it is not good enough and we are not satisfied until either it is free or we have attracted the attention of everybody in the room. We complain in the summer it is too hot. We complain in the winter that it is too cold. We talk to anybody who will listen how somebody has it better than you. It seem we are never satisfied with what we have.
Now I have one huge area where I am at my weakest point. I love electronics! Anything that is a electronic man toy I want and am just now coming to grips with this sin within me. Wait did I say sin? Yes I did. Wanting the latest technology in computers,cell phones or e-readers. when you have last years model is sin. It is akin to storing up treasures on Earth and will pull you away from your prayer life and in some ways it can pull you away from the most important thing in your life Christ himself. Now if you had read my posting yesterday I was doing just that when I wanted to trade up from my 6 inch screen kindle for the new kindle with a 9 inch screen. The first one cost me about 300 dollars 90 days ago by the time I bought all the do dads it needed. Then I saw the new,bigger and better Kindle total cost with do dads 450.00 with do dads and no book costs because I transferred them from my old to my new system. Now let us be honest 5 inch more screen and a little longer of battery life is no reason to buy this item.
Now I justified it by saying well it is easy to read and it can hold more books. Now let me be honest the smaller one was not that hard to read. I currently have 46 books on my kindle everything from The Canon of the Church to several versions of the Douay-Rheims Bible. several books by G.K. Chesterson all the way down to the Summa Theologica. I have enough books on my reader to keep me in reading material for several months. So why did I need more storage? It was a justification of the sin of want and desire not of the things of God but of Worldly goods. So you nor anybody else is alone in the battle of selfish interest and not seeking the ways of God. This is just a small section of the wide spectrum of time when we feel we either have it too hard, did not get what we deserved, received no understandings of our conditions and putting what we want in front of what God wants.
We all know what God does is for the good always if he is separated from you it is likely a test to see if you are ready to move to the next level of your relationship with him. But all to often we don't see this we pray.beg and swear to become a Priest or Nun if he would come back. Then the mind sets itself to self pity and all to soon nobody understands me. God by what he does always works for the good. He is God therefore he cannot do evil. He uses hard economic times to test and teach us. We don't see that but we complain harder than ever how hard we have it and how nobody understands what we are going through. Soon enough if we do not get out of this frame of mind comes depression pills and anxiety pills. Both because we brought it upon ourselves. Try this, the next time you hit a economic bump and you are having a hard time making your payments on your 3 bedroom home with 4 televisions in it, your two cars, satellite TV and enough food to get you by. Not enough to have the standards of dining you want, but enough to get by. I ask you to either think about or visit El Paso Texas and go to The University of Texas El Paso and stand in the south parking lot and look across the border and see what you see. You will see hundreds of shacks built out of cardboard with little cooking pipes sticking out of the tops. Every morning these pipes spew smoke into the morning air as breakfast is being prepared and I can assure you it is no where near the quality of food you eat or waste in a single day.
When we don't get everything just as we want it we complain stomp our feet and talk to whoever you can get a hold of like a dog. If you ever worked in a restaurant you've been on both sides of this one if you never had to work in a restaurant you don't know what that person is facing in their life. Perhaps she is a single Mother who is on her own because she refused to get a abortion like her family wanted. Her child was ill last night she makes minimum wage so she is on medicare and can't go to just any hospital. She got home at 4AM and had to be at work at 6AM afraid to call out sick because she may loose her job. Perhaps it was the man who last night at 11PM got a call that his best friend had been killed in Iraq and he went over to grieve and to comfort his friends parents because they were like Brothers growing up. He never got home he went straight from their house to work. Yet because a cherry was missing off their smiley face breakfast they get verbally beat in the dirt. Of course they would love to tell you what is going on but they can't (company policy) and as much as they would love to tell you just where to put that cherry when u get it, they have to just bow their heads because you have some issue that just made you mad.
Forgive the term you in this as I do not wish to accuse anybody as acting so. I use it to bring it into perspective so that if one day you are in the situation you may catch yourself and show more of God's love that your anger. Even the day God made for us we complain about it either it is too hot or too cold. We want to move out of the state that we live in and move to another state either because we like it there better or we can escape some problems by moving. Often although we claim the first the real reason is the second. We want what we don't have and have no use for what we do. There is the point of it all. We go to Mass and listen to statements time after time how God gives us all we need and we nod our heads like those little bobble head dogs you see in car windows. It leaves our heads just a second after we hear it and it is gone. We thank God for little in our lives yet complain about almost anything. Is our generation so selfish that we have forgotten who gives us all good things and declare them not good enough for us.
My wife always gets upset with me at restaurants because if the order is not right I don't complain. I just eat it as is and I am happy. The only time I will remind my server is if a drink or a main meal is missing. However I am NEVER rude. It is number one against my nature (thank heavens I fall way to short of God's path than to have another issue added) number two I have been there restaurant work is difficult and the average waitress or waiter in a Denny's or IHOP or Village Inn make (unless they have a law like New Mexico) make just over 3 dollars a hour because the Government says they make the rest on tips to make up the difference between that and minimum wage.
One of the first and hardest things to do is to give up what we own and be happy with what Christ has given us. I read somewhere that God destines some to be rich and others to be poor. The poor ones are blessed as they never have to deal with the issue of wealth. Now when I say give up what we own I mean it in the terms of not giving inn to our desires for possessions as it is not likely anybody could sell all he owns and have his family on the street. I often think back to that 398 dollar Kindle and hang my head in shame. 328 Dollars could have done allot at a battered woman's home or at a rescue mission or to buy groceries for somebody in need. We have to learn to thank God for ALL things good,bad or indifferent. For what seems a horrible situation to us is really a test and if we just thanked God for the hardships, and meant it much greater rewards await us after the hard time passes.
It is a old saying in our home that no matter how bad things get Christ has never let us down. I want to share with you a true story about a true miracle. It was the day I learned that giving thanks in hard times lead to larger rewards one the test passes on. It was a Sunday and I was at Mass we were excited because the travelling Out Lady of Fatima Statue was at our Parish that day. The Mass was great and the procession was even better. I wanted to take some time to pray to our Lady of Fatima so I waited in line for my turn. During this time both my wife and I were awaiting our retirement to be finalized and money was tight. We had no money for milk,bread,butter we were flat broke and two months behind on the house and we had a week till we got some money in and all we had to eat was beans. Realistically we could have pulled through it would not have been easy but it could have been done. My turn came to kneel and pray before Our Lady of Fatima which I did. However my prayer was a prayer for thanks and not for what I needed. I thanked her for her intercessions and for all the great things her son had done for someone as insignificant as I. I thanked her for my great wife and kids my puppy dogs and for the joy I felt in my heart everyday. I then got up and left and expecting nothing more, My wife got up early that day and went to her computer and checked our bank account. She nearly gave me heart failure as she screamed to the top of her lungs. Our account didn't have the 2,98 she expected but instead had 15,002.98. With no letter of acceptance or any other kind of notice my wife's retirement annuity had come in. She was retired and we were able to pay everything back up to date and put food in the house. I regard this as another miracle of Our Lady of Fatima. While some scoff at the word miracle I don't. God will never let us down and Christ will do many things for his mother. So weather you think it was or not I hold to the stance it was a miracle.
So lets all of us try to remember to thank God in all things good, bad, or indifferent. Also if we have had a bad night or morning lets agree to not pass a bad day on to all we come in contact with. I in my very limited mind could never comprehend the goodness,mercy and love of God. It all seems so great to me and when I try to love Christ as much as he loves me I come up way short of the scale. To confront this fact is so depressing to me as I am shown both my insignificance as well as my lack of deserving for all that God does for me. It is said I am not worthy. When I look at myself through my eyes this insignificance shines as bright as the sun. Yet to see myself through his eyes is to rejoice in thankfulness with tears of appreciation at his mercy and grace that seems endless. So if you ever find yourself not being thankful for what God gave you stop. See how you look in God's eyes it will change your day. It will change your week and will change you life.
God Bless
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