Living in small rural counties for over forty years has taught me better about those things. The power goes out for sometimes no apparent reason and when you have a well, no power means no water either. Garbage pickup is non-existent so you haul your own and suddenly become very aware of all the trash you generate and try to make it less. So we were expecting all the paperwork involved in transferring those services from the previous owners of our new home and not upset by it or the deposits. We were simply grateful to at long last have these sort of services on a reliable basis.
But the post office completely let us down. Even though we had filed change of address in a timely manner, there is no contingency for people who are between closing on the old property and closing on the new. Surely millions like us exist, needing the money on the old to pay for the new, and thus several days with no address. Would they hold our mail in our new city? No, they would not. It would all be "returned to sender." Since we were expecting three or four bills, including credit card and car insurance bills, we were left scrambling, trying to find out how much we owed and where to send it. Despite its slogan ("neither rain nor snow…"), it will be a good while before we take daily mail delivery for granted again.
Even if you think you are better than most, I guarantee there is something you take for granted, a blessing that comes from God. We may all have our troubles, but as Jeremiah reminds us, we would have only the bad and nothing good at all if it weren't for God (Lam 3:22), something he said in the middle of famine, disease, and the destruction of Jerusalem.
Do you have a home, regardless its size and amenities? Do you have a family? Do you have food on your table and clothes on your back? Can you travel to work in relative safety? (Do you even have a job?) Do you have the medicine you need? Can you pay for your true necessities, if not for all the high tech gadgets you think you "deserve" simply because everyone else has them, and do you take all this for granted as if God owed it to you, if you even think of Him at all in relation to them?
Yes, we should also be thanking God for all these relatively minor things which we too often treat as the most important of all, more important even than salvation from sin and rescue from an eternity in Hell. But that should then lead us on to recognition and gratitude for those grander spiritual gifts which we too seldom think about, and thus, too often take for granted. When the time comes that they suddenly loom in our consciousness, we may find ourselves wishing we had been more aware and more grateful, and hoping it is not too late.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning (Jas 1:17).
Dene Ward