Thought for the Day - Thursday 2 July

Thought for the Day – Thursday 2^nd July

‘It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night. For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy.’ (Psalm 92: 1-2, 4)

I am back in my student days again and today I find myself reminiscing about my first Child Development classes at Teacher Training College in Hamilton. It was one of those ‘light bulb’ moments for me and in particular the moment when I first became fascinated by how a child acquires language which then enables them to communicate and later read. It still fascinates me today! I was the youngest of my family so I had never had a younger brother or sister in whom to witness this process for myself and as I was only engaged to be married at that time I had no children of my own either with whom to share in this process and so it truly was a revelation to me that no matter where in the world a child was, no matter the language of their native land, they all went through the same process of acquiring that language and beginning to speak. 

First words are often a wee competition between parents aren’t they?

The mother is usually trying to get the child to say ‘mama’ or ‘mum’ first and the father ‘dada’ or ‘dad’ first. Of course, regardless of what a child says first it is always a great delight to their parents! Then after ‘mama’ or ‘dada’ what usually comes next is ‘thank you’ – and you know the game to play - every time the child hands you something you say ‘thank you’ and every time they take it back you say ‘thank you’ on their behalf and so it goes on until eventually after the millionth or so time of you saying ‘thank you’ they eventually take something from you and say ‘thank you’!

So much effort put into acquiring those words ‘thank you’!

How strange it is then that as grown up Christians that in our prayers these two words, which we have put so much effort into acquiring at a young age, are often the first words that we forget to say in our prayers!

Now maybe I am making assumptions about your prayers but when you think about them and the circumstances in which you pray it is often more likely to be that they would be more about ‘please’ and less about ‘thank you’. We ask God for his help, we ask for his peace, we ask him to be with others, we ask for a whole host of different things, different people, different situations and different places and sometimes when he does indeed answer our prayers, provide for our needs, bring us peace, be with other people, make his presence felt in other places, be in the midst of situations we just forget to say ‘thank you’. We forget to show him we appreciate him. We would never dream of not saying ‘thank you’ to someone who had shown us kindness or compassion or forgiveness in our daily lives but so often we forget to say ‘thank you’ to God who shows us such things each and every day of our lives.

Our text today reminds us that ‘It is good to give thanks to the Lord’ so please don’t forget how hard it was to acquire those words in the first place and never forget how easy it is to use them now, nor the fact that God would like to hear them just as much as any other person who shows kindness to you.

Prayer

Loving God, Your love for us is beyond measure – a steadfast love new every morning, your faithfulness never fails us - with us day and night, you provide for our every need and in grateful praise we say ‘thank you’. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen