Thank God for good health- but so what?

“Thank you for the world so sweet, thank you for the food we eat, thank you for the birds that sing, thank you God for everything, amen.”

These are the lyrics of one of my favorite songs from elementary school and singing it almost forty years later makes me a little emotional because it brings back many sweet memories. At the same time, I am wondering if I even understood what I was singing or to whom I was singing.

Not long after we learn to say our very first words as babies, we are taught how to say “thank you” to show our gratitude for the things we receive from others. As soon as we have been introduced to religion and can begin to understand that there is a God who’s got the whole world in his hands, we are also taught how to show gratitude to Him for all the things he does for us.

A couple of years ago, I started to notice that when people thanked God, let’s say for a new day, they would say “many people did not wake up to see today, so let’s be thankful that we got to see today”. Similarly, when they thanked God for their health, they would say something like this: “many people are sick and lying in a hospital bed, so let’s be thankful that we are not living with sickness and disease”. That’s about where those prayers ended.

We should absolutely thank God for the opportunity to see a new day and the blessing to be free from disease- but why express your gratitude by comparing yourself with those who do not seem to be as fortunate as you. I felt there was something very wrong with these types of gratitude statements, so I asked myself some questions:

• What difference did it make if someone died three years earlier than today or 20 years from today? We are all eventually going six feet under anyway, aren’t we?

• What was the difference between someone who had a chronic disease and did the things that mattered or someone who was perfectly well and didn’t do the things that mattered?

These types of questions made me think long, deep and hard and it seemed to make more sense to me that what really mattered was the quality of life lived and not the number of years lived or the state of health you find yourself in. Someone who lives for forty years could have a more productive life than someone who lives beyond eighty years, and similarly, someone with a chronic disease could have a more productive life than someone who has no disease. So, shouldn’t your gratitude to God be more about a new opportunity to be productive than about the length of your days or state of your health?

Your productivity on earth will be measured by God alone and not by yourself or anyone else, and it makes sense to connect with God to know what His requirements are. After all, He created you and he has the owner’s manual for your life. The psalmist prays that God should teach us to number our days so that we can apply our hearts unto wisdom. So, be grateful that you have access to God through prayer and the bible to gain the knowledge and wisdom you need to live productively on earth.

God’s expectation of you is simple- to show sacrificial love to others as he has shown to you through his death on the cross. Your productivity on earth, which should be your core focus on earth, will be measured by how much you loved God through loving others within your sphere of influence.

So, next time you thank God for a new day, your health or anything else for that matter, ask yourself this question: “But so what?” Hopefully that would be a little reminder that there is a deeper purpose to life that what you see and you will be prompted to ask and receive wisdom from God, every new day, to do what matters most and what counts for eternity.

This week, by all means be thankful to God- but so what?

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