Be Thankful To God, Stop Complaining

by Kevin Burton

   I caught myself in a lie last week. Christmas music, in a manner of speaking, revealed it to me.

   Stay with me here.

   I have heard people talk about when it was OK to begin playing Christmas music each year, after Thanksgiving, end of November, whatever. But I haven’t heard anybody talking about when the Christmas music should stop.

   Before this year I have always stopped after the 25^th.  I have always said Christmas music just left me cold after Christmas. This year has been different.

   My mother had an emergency trip to the hospital on Dec. 23 and stayed in until the 28^th with some sort of virus.

   I was with her Christmas, overnight into the 26^th. I came home and played Christmas music, telling my wife Jeannette “I’m playing this music in order to make up for the Christmas that was stolen from me.”

   In saying that, I’m not sure how I defining “Christmas.” But one thing is clear. Whatever I thought Christmas was supposed to be, I didn’t get enough of it, and thought I deserved it.

   And if anyone was stealing from me, who could that be but God Himself?

   Took a little while for me to see through my folly and repent.

   I deserve nothing. But God has blessed me and my family abundantly over the years, with earthly and the sure promise of heavenly blessings.

    Since she is 90, any hospital stay for my mother is nerve-wracking for me.  But she lived and that’s really all that should have mattered.

   Christmas was far less than ideal for us. But I was acting entitled, ungrateful.

   I post messages from Alistair Begg a lot on Page 7. This one I was badly in need of myself.

   Begg is the speaker on the Truth For Life radio ministry. A recent e-mail message came under the headline, “Complain Less, Give Thanks More.”

   “If we complained less and were more thankful, we would be happier, and God would be more glorified,” Begg wrote.

    “Every day thank God for ordinary mercies—we refer to them as ordinary, and yet they are so priceless that without them we are ready to perish. Let us thank God for our eyes with which we see the sun, for the health and strength to walk around, for the bread we eat, for the clothes we wear.”

   “Let us thank Him that we are not among the hopeless or confined among the guilty; let us thank Him for liberty, for friends, for family associations and comforts. Let us praise Him, in fact, for everything that we receive from His generous hand, for although we deserve little, He provides an abundance.”

   “The sweetest and the loudest note in our thankful songs should be of redeeming love,” Begg wrote. “God’s redeeming acts toward His chosen are forever the favorite themes of their praise. If we know what redemption means, let us not withhold our hymns of thanksgiving.”

   “We have been redeemed from the power of our corruptions, lifted from the depth of sin in which we were naturally plunged. We have been led to the cross of Christ—our shackles of guilt have been removed. We are no longer slaves, but children of the living God, and can anticipate the time when we will be presented before the throne without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.”

   “Even now by faith we wrap ourselves in the fair linen that is to be our everlasting array and rehearse our unceasing thankfulness to the Lord our Redeemer.”

   “Child of God, can you remain silent? Stir yourselves with thoughts of your inheritance, and lead your captivity captive, crying with David, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.”

   “Let this new month begin with new songs,” Begg wrote, and I pray it will be so for me and for you.

   And as for getting my fill of Christmas, let us all get our fill of Christ and let everything else fall wherever it may.