Presuming on the Giver of all Good Gifts

I have this principle that I’ve been developing in my head that goes something like this: beware of blessings becoming a new baseline.

There are times when God pours out some sort of unexpected blessing. Maybe it’s a financial blessing that came from an inheritance that wasn’t on your radar. Maybe some chronic pain or sickness was suddenly lifted, and you have new vigor and passion for life. It could be something small. It could be something large. But whatever it is, its introduction into your life results in true gratefulness unto the Lord.

What I’ve observed, however, is that if that blessing lasts for more than a moment, over time it starts to become an expectation. It’s the new baseline of your existence. You expect that money. You expect that health. You expect that friendship. You expect that job. You expect that pay. And if you’re not careful, you begin to think it’s something you’re entitled to. So much so that, if your expectations are not met, you believe you’ve been robbed. It can get so ridiculous that the blessing that at first caused an explosion of thankfulness toward God can later, when removed, lead the individual to doubt God’s very goodness.

This is one of the reasons pain, suffering, and difficulty in general can be so spiritually helpful. These things remind us that our baseline, that is, our expectations, is very presumptuous. The things we take for granted are gifts. And often we don’t recognize that until they’ve been removed.

Much of my life is built around my ability to both think and speak with clarity. During a very rough season a couple years ago, due to all the pain and struggle in our life, the loss of normal sleep, and a poor diet and lack of exercise, I found my mind very foggy and not as quick as I had come to expect. Things that usually took me a few minutes started stretching into an hour. And I realized that I had presumed upon mental clarity. Many men and women were once witty and great conversational partners but now can’t tell one person from the next due to dementia. As I reflected on that, I repented to God for being so presumptuous.

I also tend to lose my voice for a couple of weeks (sometimes even months) every several years. This all stretches back to a time in my late twenties when I was legitimately unable to talk for a couple weeks. For someone who’s made his way through life as part of the chatter class, it was a wake-up call. I possess thousands and thousands of gifts that I don’t recognize as such. Some big, like the ability to think and speak; some small, like a good cup of coffee. But all of them are from God.

One reason I’ve been meditating on this is that I have found people’s sense of entitlement to be shocking. The things they believe are owed to them aren’t owed to anyone. Many of the things that our forefathers in America enjoyed were largely gifts, and those blessings became our baseline. And now that God has removed them, no doubt in part as a judgment, we doubt His goodness. Of course, we should instead be discovering our presumptuousness, recognizing how little we thank Him for all the other gifts we still have.

I’m using gifts and blessings interchangeably, so I’m not thinking of “gift” in a really technical way. Keep that in mind as I say this. There are some blessings that take the form of a partial reward. Part of our problem these days is that we’ve allowed blessings to become the baseline. We expect these things just to come to us, just to be there when we want or need them. But God, being a good Father, gives and takes away in an effort to shape us into virtuous men and women. Which is one of the reasons He blesses things like diligence and true cheerfulness. He blesses them not because He has a debt He has to pay, but because He has children He wants to encourage in the right way.

Painting: Lisa Godin