God Loves Us First, We Love Him Last
In the blockbuster movie Forest Gump, there’s a beautiful picture of God's love. It’s seen in the relationship between Forest and Jenny. From childhood, Forest loves Jenny. But Jenny is too enamored by worldly things and looks past Forest in her search for fulfillment. Jenny strikes out in search of fame and success but finds disappointment and heartache instead. All the while, Forest waits for her to come home to him.
Forest loved Jenny first, before everything else. But Jenny failed to appreciate his devotion until the very end of her life. Although Forest picked Jenny first, she picked him last.
Fortunately, Forest's love for Jenny was so selfless that he did not resent her for doing so.
In the same way, our first choice in life isn’t God. Enamored by the world, we look past Him to all of the things that we are sure will bring us lasting happiness.
But while we're doing all of that, God waits patiently for us. We pursue everything that life has to offer before we were willing to look to the One who gave us life. And even though He gave His life for us, we hold our life back from Him.
But after the idols we preferred fail us, God is still there, patiently waiting and willing to be picked last.
And that's what we do. At the end of ourselves, and despite ourselves, we reluctantly turn to the One who loved us from the beginning.
"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:10, NIV).
"But God has shown us how much he loves us--it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us!" (Romans 5:8, GNT).
Defined By Gratitude
In relation to gratitude, there are three types of people in the world; 1) those who take God's blessings completely for granted; 2) those who are grateful for how God has blessed them; 3) and those rare few who are grateful to God just because He is God.
Where are you on the scale of gratitude? Have you matured in your faith to the point where you understand that God is worthy of your devotion, even when things are not how you'd like them to be? Are you grateful to God just because He is God?
"You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being" (Revelation 4:11).
The Leprosy of Ingratitude
"I have always been intrigued by the story of our Lord's healing of the 10 lepers. As they were on their way to show themselves to the priests who would attest to their cure, they were healed. But only one, a despised Samaritan, returned to our Lord to express his gratitude. Our Lord, surprised that only one had done so, then told this Samaritan to rise and go, for his faith had made him whole. It seems odd that Jesus should appear to repeat his cure, since the story had already recorded the healing of all them."
Desmond Tutu (1931 - ) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 and was only the second black person ever to receive it. In 1986 he was elected archbishop of Cape Town, the highest position in the Anglican Church in South Africa. In 1994, after the end of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela, Tutu was appointed as chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate apartheid-era crimes. His policy of forgiveness and reconciliation has become an international example of conflict resolution, and a trusted method of postconflict reconstruction.
"I have thought," Tutu concludes, "that perhaps this Gospel story points to a deeper leprosy in the spirit, the leprosy of ingratitude. To be unthankful, to be unappreciative, is in fact to be diseased. To cleanse our spirits of depression, of self-pity and other forms of spiritual leprosy, we have to be thankful, appreciative persons."
Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well" (Luke 17:19).