by A.W. Tozer
A great city newspaper came up lately with an idea that might have meaning to a lot of us Christians any time and seems to be especially appropriate around the Thanksgiving season.
Asking the question, "What does it take to thrill a man?" the editorial writer said that a man whose name is known throughout the whole world, who has received from the nations of the earth just about every honor that can be accorded to men and whose own country had elected him to the highest position it could give any of its citizens, had recently expressed himself as being "thrilled" at being permitted to sit up a few minutes in a wheel chair. That man, of course, was Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the occasion was his first time out of bed after his heart attack.
This touching incident in the life of a great man should teach us that we are likely to overlook our real blessings and fail to be thankful for them because they are small or because they appear to be trifling and ordinary. We may be grateful for life's rare mountain peaks and fail completely to see the dozens or scores of little hills that make the landscape beautiful.
Biography may be either a help or a hindrance, depending upon how we interpret and apply it. The biographer usually accents the high, stirring moments in the life of his subject and of necessity passes over the days and years when nothing out of the ordinary happened. Yet without the thousands of common days there could have been no continuity between the uncommon ones to bind the life together. In reading the lives of great men we must beware that we do not become dissatisfied with our tame existence and hold lightly the countless treasures which through the mercy of God we all possess. A life that lasted fifty or seventy or ninety years must be condensed into a few pages with the result that the terrain is shoved together and the view distorted. From this out-of-focus picture we are likely to draw three erroneous conclusions: one, that the subject was greater than he actually was; two, that by contrast we are smaller than we really are, and three, that God respects persons and distributes His favors unevenly among His children.
Everything in life is relative, including our blessings. A man who has had the world at his feet may be reduced to a state where he will be grateful for the privilege of sitting fifteen minutes in a wheel chair. And the man thus placed who can be as grateful for one gift as for the other has learned the true meaning of Thanksgiving. A man who has been for years totally blind may laugh and weep with thankfulness if at last he recovers but partial sight in one eye. The little polio victim will scream with delight when he discovers that he can run a little bit, even if in doing so he must push an awkward brace along with him. And so with all our lives and all our days. We are always richer than we think.
The conclusion of the matter is simply that we should cultivate the habit of being thankful for small things. Not that we should be less grateful for the great epochal blessings, such as our first radiant sight of the shining kingdom of God in conversion, or deliverance from some physical disease in answer to prayer. These great mountain peaks will always command our attention and stir our hearts to praise. But we must see to it that we do not ignore the humbler blessings.
Personally I am not as strong as Samson, but I'll never cease to thank God I am able to get about over the surface of the earth and attend to the work God has given me to do. I am not a Plato mentally, but I thank God I am sane. I am not rich, but neither am I reduced to beggary. And so with every other blessing the Lord has given me. I hope always to be thankful for the little things; then I'll know what to do with the big ones when God sees fit to send them my way.
( Article taken from The Price of Neglect, Chapter 36 )
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