I’m Not Any Different!

By Perina

Let them give thanks to the LORD for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for mankind.

(Psalms 107:21)

The other day, I had an unexpected visitor. It was Amo (not his real name), and I was meeting him after some years. Amo had worked as a domestic help with a person I knew. Later, he had left the job and gone back to his home, which was located in a distant part of the country. But now he was back: someone in the city had offered him work in a bakery. Beset with financial difficulties following his father’s death, he decided to return and take up the offer, even if it meant having to leave his family far behind in their village home.

Amo began working in the bakery. The salary was fairly good, and when I met him, he didn’t seem displeased with the job. But only a couple of days later I learnt from someone that Amo had quit. Taken aback by this news, I called Amo to find out what had happened. Apparently, the manager of the bakery had treated him very shabbily, and there were some other issues, too, perhaps, and so, Amo decided to leave. It was all most unexpected.

Amo had come all the way from his home far away so that he could earn for family—his aged mother, his wife and his little child—whom he had left back in his village. What hope must have driven him to travel all that great distance! Little did he know then what was in store for him. He was denied proper bedding to sleep and food, and when I called him up to find out why he had left his job, he had, apparently, already spent much, if not almost all, of the money that he had brought with him on eating out. To add to all of this was the manager’s rudeness, which had driven Amo to quit.

I felt bad for Amo and prayed for him. I transferred a little sum of money to his bank account. Hopefully, it would cover a not insignificant portion of what he had already spent after arriving in the city—on things like food and transport. I forwarded the receipt for the transfer of the money to Amo’s phone. That way, he would know I had sent the money to him.

I had hoped that Amo would notice the receipt and thank me for the money. After all, it is basic good manners, isn’t it, to thank someone who does you good. I checked my phone several times over 1-2 days but there was no response from Amo. Apparently, Amo had seen the receipt for the bank transfer—the blue tick marks at the bottom of the WhatsApp message indicated that—but he hadn’t bothered to inform me that he had got the money, leave alone thank me for sending it.

I felt awful. I thought Amo lacked manners and was ungrateful. How could he take me for granted like that! My sympathy for him vanished. I decided that I would never help him financially again. It wasn’t my duty to send him any money but yet I had done so and he didn’t have the basic courtesy to thank me for it. I thought really bad thoughts about Amo then.

*

But this morning, the thought came to me that I was like Amo myself, actually. Amo hadn’t thanked me for the money I had sent him. In just the same way, I hadn’t thanked God, the Provider of all things, for all the many things He has provided me. That makes me like Amo, isn’t it?

It is true that I do sometimes thank God for some things He gives me, but it is also true that I do not thank God for everything He gives me. Actually, I have spent many decades of my life not thanking God for anything at all.

The fact is that everything I have has been given to me by God, and these things are so many in number that I just won’t be able to thank Him for each one of them even if I tried to.

Often, I don’t even try to thank God for things He has given me. Laziness, indifference, and not wanting to make the effort (regarding it as too much of a bother and a drain on my time), are some reasons why I don’t bother to thank God for a great many of the things He has blessed me with. It is only for a few of the vast number of things that God gives me that I thank Him, and that, too, only sometimes. In the case of the vast majority of the things that God blesses me with, I use them without thinking I ought to thank Him for them.

How, then, am I any different from Amo when it comes to being grateful for favours received and expressing thanks for them?