Another reliable road to failure and frustration is ingratitude, the habit of assuming that everything owed to us is a right while everything we give is a favor. Ungrateful husbands, wives, children, and neighbors steadily poison their relationships, only discovering too late often after death has intervened how rich their lives once were and how little they appreciated it. At its root, this spirit of ingratitude is first and foremost ingratitude toward God, who gives us life, sustains us daily, and offers us forgiveness and eternal life in Jesus Christ, yet is treated as though He owed us everything and we owed Him nothing. Because we neglect our greatest debt of gratitude, we become blind to all lesser ones. The Christian, however, grounded in gratitude for both creation and salvation, responds to God’s gifts by offering his own life in thankful obedience, and in doing so finds not failure but peace and joy, for thankfulness silences anxiety and opens the heart to “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,” guarding life and soul in Christ Jesus.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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