I've Recently Been Inspired to

write a short non-fiction book. I have a few non-fiction projects on the back burner and there they'll stay because dissertation is the priority. But in the past couple of days, I've feel a push to pen something real quick on thanksgiving.

The issue of thanksgiving is interesting. Thanksgiving is and should be an essential part of the Christian life. One problem is that we are conditioned to think of thanksgiving as a response to a favorable action by someone else. But not only favorable, it has to be satisfactory or we have to see a certain threshhold of effort in order to show and express gratitude. This is a problem because for the things that God does for us, we see them as easy for Him, or we don't even pay attention to them and thus fail to give him thanks when we should.

It sort of like when you eat a good dish the first time, you'll rate it a ten, but if you eat that same meal repeatedly over time, your rating for that same meal diminishes, because its excellence gradually becomes the new standard or average. Same thing with God. In spite of the myriad of things God does for us, we tend to forget or let them drift into the background and then expect these things done without the requisite gratitude. This is why, then, we encounter difficulties, because they snap us back into reality and we can refocus on the things that God has done for us which we have taken for granted.