I'm Healthy Today!

There’s been a stomach bug going around these parts lately.  I hoped I would avoid it . . . but not quite.  I was blessed with a very mild case, hardly worth mention, but it got me thinking about how thankful I am that even that little annoying pain isn’t part of my daily life.  Sickness, after all, isn’t some added thing, but the absence of health in some form.  Few of us wake up every morning and think, “Praise the Lord!  I’m healthy today!”  We’re so used to it, we don’t even notice until it is taken away, and then we complain.  But perhaps we should look at it from another angle and be thankful for the health we do have so much of.

Health, like all other good things in life, is a grace of God.  We don’t deserve it – in fact, it would serve us right if we were sick all the time, considering the flippant way we so often treat our bodies.  But day after day, most of us wake up in good health, and day after day, we take it for granted.  This goes for most of the good things in life, the graces of God that we enjoy.  How often do we thank God for the air we breathe?  Hold your breath for a couple minutes, and suddenly that invisible stuff is precious!  Sleep under the stars – right now, in January – and your house, however shabby and cluttered, will seem a most beloved shelter.  Try fasting a day or two and see how much more you appreciate being able to eat every day.  Go without water, too . . . isn’t the stuff pouring out of the faucet at your slightest effort beautiful?

The list could go on and on – stay up all night, go barefoot, live through a power outage, walk a few miles, chop a tree down or dig a hole by hand.  Not only are our needs abundantly provided for, but we have many things to make life so easy that we hardly think about what it would be like without them.  And what about people?  The response to the loss of (admittedly annoying) family members is so often, “I wish I’d appreciated them more, spent more time with them, etc.”  Only when a grace is taken from us, be it a relationship, electricity, running water, or health, do we see it for what it is.  Perhaps God sometimes temporarily withdraws a blessing to remind us that we need Him, and inspire us to give Him praise for it.  And sometimes, He may not give it back.  So let’s be thankful now for all God’s undeserved goodness so richly lavished on us!

Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers.

Every good and perfect gift is from above . . .

James 1:16-17