I’ve been digging this new song by Aaron Shust called My Savior My God. Well, honestly I don’t know how new it is since I don’t listen the local CCM station that much. But I digress… I went to his web site and found that he’s done a devotional type thingy for each song on the album. For this song, he starts out saying :

When I have a good day, I say, “God, thank you. You are really blessing me.” Blessing is a word that I only hear Christians use. I have heard it means to “speak well about a thing”, but I think it’s used more often in the sense of I need a raise, or a gift, or something specific. “God, bless me” in this context means: I want my business to do well, or I want a motorcycle, or I want to pay my rent this month.

When I’m having a bad day, I say, “God, don’t forget me. Please hear my prayers”, as if He may have forgotten about me.

One of my favorite communicators, Bill Bahr, tells a story of a man who, through a series of events, misses his flight and, when the plane crashes and everyone dies, an article is written in a Christian publication saying, “God was watching out for him.” Not long after that article appeared, another article is written by the wife of a man who, by a series of seemingly miraculous events, made it onto that flight, and the last communication that they had was waving goodbye to each other with joy in their hearts at how God had orchestrated events that allowed him to make his flight…that would take him to his death. So who was God really looking out for? Was God working in one man’s life and not the other? (read more)

This echoes a lot of the thoughts that have been going through my head lately. We tend to thank God only for the nice stuff that happens to us. But many times if something “good” happens to us then this precludes it from happening to someone else. If we get the house we’ve been wanting then it’s likely someone else didn’t. If we get that last ticket then someone else is left sitting at the terminal. Quite honestly, it is presumptuous for us to think that God has explicitly directed things so that we might be more comfortable. Not discounting the personalness(is that a word?) of God, I think He is interested in far greater things than seeing to our comfort.

Like I said, these thoughts have been itching the back of my brain so stay tuned for more on the subject…