How easy it is for me to mistakenly take for granted the many gifts that God has given me. Of course God gives me food, health, a loving family, a job, and a home! Why should he not? I am His child after all, I have dedicated my life to Him, doesn't that entitle me to receive my basic needs and a few of my wants thrown in on top? Isn't He just filling His half of the deal that we both signed when I became a Christian? Like a spoiled toddler, I act as though the world revolves around me, as if God ought to sovereignly orchestrate the world's events to suit my desires.

Now, do I ever conciously think those things? No, but my attitude betrays that this is my true mindset. Only when I realize that I deserve nothing but punishment am I able to be humbly grateful for what I have; blessings of redemption and beyond. Even though God, in His infinite mercy and apart from any merit on my part, chose to redeem me with the blood of His Son, He is under no contract to give me one more blessing. He could say "Look, you get to go to heaven once this life is over, that is the one and only thing you are going to receive from me." And that one and only thing ought to be enough to make me spend the rest of my days giving thanks without expectation of anything further.

Yet the Lord doesn't stop at redemption but continues to heap blessing upon blessing. And lately, the Lord has granted me things that I know beyond a doubt I don't deserve and which I could never have brought about by myself. This is the Lord's doing, it is marvelous in my eyes.